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Dessert

Ice Cream Without Cookinq

A chilled dessert made by mixing milk, eggs, sugar, corn starch, and sweet cream, then freezing with ice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Ice Cream Without Cookinq

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the milk, beaten eggs, sugar, and corn starch in a three-quart tin pan.

  2. Boil the mixture in a kettle of water until it thickens.

Finish and freeze

  1. Add the sweet cream and flavor to taste.

  2. Freeze the mixture in a suitable vessel with equal parts chopped ice and coarse sea salt.

  3. Rotate the tin pan and stir frequently.

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.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Their proteins set when heated, helping thicken the custard base.
Corn starch
Swells when heated, thickening the custard so the ice cream is smooth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Sweet cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream richer and creamier.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the thickened custard and cream are built on.

The step that matters

Boil until it thickens. Cornstarch and egg proteins thicken as they heat, so the mixture must reach thickening without overheating. Too little heat leaves it thin, and too much can scramble the eggs.

“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.

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