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Dessert

Frozen Custard

A sweet, creamy dessert made by cooking milk with egg yolks and sugar, then freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Frozen Custard

Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Frozen Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and mix in 1 cup of sugar and the salt.

  3. Pour the hot milk over the egg mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Return the mixture to the heat and cook until thick as cream, stirring continuously.

Cool and freeze

  1. Remove from heat, add the remaining sugar, and let it cool.

  2. Once cool, add the flavoring and freeze the mixture.

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.

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.

  1. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard when heated and add richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that gives the custard its body and creamy mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen texture softer by lowering the freezing point.
Flavoring
Adds the main aroma and taste added after the custard has cooled.

The step that matters

Cook the custard gently and stir constantly until thick. Egg yolk proteins set when heated, so too much heat or too little stirring can curdle the eggs into lumps instead of a smooth custard.

“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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