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
Ingredients
Directions
Make the base
Mix arrowroot with enough milk to make a thin paste.
In a saucepan, combine cream and milk, and bring to a boil.
Stir in the arrowroot mixture and let it boil again.
Remove from heat.
Flavor and freeze
Stir in the sugar until dissolved.
Add the split vanilla bean to the milk while boiling for flavor.
Add a few drops of lemon juice after boiling for lemon flavor.
Add juice from 1 quart of ripe strawberries with the sugar for strawberry flavor.
Freeze the mixture in the usual manner.
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.
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Arrowroot + vanillatop 3% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together242 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Arrowroot + lemontop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together553 recipes
Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
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Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together19,187 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
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Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together35,032 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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 cream and milk into a smooth custard-like base without eggs.
- Cream
- Adds richness and fat, giving the frozen ice cream a creamy texture.
- Milk
- Forms the liquid body of the base, carrying the other ingredients.
- Loaf sugar
- Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
The step that matters
Stir in the arrowroot mixture and let it boil again. Arrowroot thickens only when it reaches a boil and is kept hot briefly. Adding it to a base that is not hot, or stopping early, leaves the mixture thin and grainy-textured after freezing.
“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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