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Dessert

Mock Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with milk, sugar, corn starch, eggs, and a pinch of salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Mock Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Warm the milk slightly and dissolve the sugar in it.

  2. In a bowl, mix the corn starch with a little cold milk.

  3. Break the eggs into the corn starch mixture and stir well.

  4. Add the egg and starch mixture to the warm milk and sugar.

  5. Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens to the consistency of good cream.

Strain and cool

  1. Strain the mixture through a coarse towel.

  2. Let it cool completely before flavoring.

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. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

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

Milk and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and egg thicken into a creamy custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving the custard a smooth, creamy body.
Eggs
Add protein that helps set and enrich the custard as it cooks.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and adds body to the mixture.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over low heat, stirring constantly. Starch thickens only when heated, but the egg proteins can scramble if the heat is too high or stirring stops. Constant stirring over low heat keeps the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

“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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