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Dessert

Ice Cream with Arrowroot

A frozen dessert made from cream, milk, sugar, arrowroot, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 242 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Ice Cream with Arrowroot

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix the arrowroot with ½ cup of the milk.

  2. Heat the remaining milk in a double boiler until it boils.

  3. Beat in the arrowroot mixture and cook for 10 minutes, stirring often.

  4. Remove from heat, add the sugar, and let cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cool, add the cream and vanilla, then freeze.

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. Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together242 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving a smooth, glossy body without clouding.
Cream
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base and, once heated with the arrowroot, the body of the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen ice cream from freezing too hard.

The step that matters

Cooking the arrowroot mixture. Arrowroot is a starch that thickens when heated in liquid. Stirring often keeps it evenly dispersed so it thickens smoothly without lumps or scorching on the base of the double boiler.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, milk, sugar, vanilla):

  1. Arrowrootthe original
  2. Sweet potatofits about as well
  3. Potatofits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, sugar, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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