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Dessert

Cocoa Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cocoa, sugar, egg yolks, cream, and milk, chilled and frozen.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cocoa Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix cocoa, sugar, corn starch, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add scalded milk and the stick of cinnamon; cook in a double boiler for 20 minutes.

  3. Beat egg yolks slightly, then add cream, melted butter, and vanilla.

  4. Combine with the first mixture, strain, chill, and freeze.

Optional addition

  1. Optionally, add 1 cup of raspberry pulp before freezing for added flavor.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + corntop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 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. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as it cooks.
Cream
Adds fat and a smooth, creamy texture to the finished ice cream.
Cocoa
Provides the chocolate flavor and deep color.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture by lowering the freezing point.
Corn starch
Thickens the mixture so the custard becomes smooth and stable.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk mixture in a double boiler. Cooking gently over indirect heat keeps the thickening starch and egg proteins from scorching or curdling, so the custard stays smooth.

Swap the cocoa

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cinnamon, sugar, egg, corn, cream, butter, milk):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Pecansfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cinnamon, sugar, egg, corn, cream, butter, milk. 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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