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Dessert

Ice Cream

A homemade ice cream made with milk, cream, sugar, corn starch, and optional fruit or extracts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Ice Cream

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the ice

  1. Pound ice finely in a sturdy bag.

  2. Pack the ice with alternate layers of coarse sea salt around the pail.

Make the base

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Wet the corn starch in a little cold milk, then add it to the hot milk.

  3. Stir in the sugar and cream until well combined.

Freeze and flavor

  1. Freeze the mixture.

  2. If using strawberries, add them when the cream is half frozen.

  3. Add flavoring extracts to taste, if desired.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries the sweetness and richness of the ice cream.
Corn starch
Thickens the base as it heats, giving the frozen ice cream a smoother, less icy body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the ice cream richer and creamier in texture.

The step that matters

Wet the corn starch in cold milk before adding it to the hot milk. Starch dropped into hot liquid clumps instantly because the outer granules swell before the inside can hydrate. Mixing it first into a little cold milk disperses the granules evenly, so the base thickens smoothly instead of becoming lumpy.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

More ice cream recipes

Strawberry 208Vanilla 203Chocolate 177Cake 127Coffee 119Pineapple 104 See all 440 →

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