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New York Ice Cream

A homemade ice cream made with milk, flour, eggs, sugar, cream, and optional fruit.

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 ↓

New York Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Dissolve the flour in a little water to make a paste and stir it into the milk until slightly thickened.

  3. Cover and cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Beat the eggs with the sugar, then stir into the mixture until dissolved and thickened.

  5. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Add the cream and desired flavoring, then freeze.

  2. If desired, mix in crushed fruit according to the season.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Thicken the base as they cook and add richness and structure to the frozen cream.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a paste-like base that holds the mixture together.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream smoother and richer.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the custard that the other ingredients thicken.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard after adding the eggs and sugar. Eggs thicken when heated gently, but if the mixture gets too hot they can curdle and turn grainy. Keep the heat low and stir steadily, then strain to catch any lumps.

“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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