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Dessert

Vanilla Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with sugar, water, cream, egg yolks, vanilla extract, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Vanilla Ice Cream

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Vanilla Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the sugar and water together for 25 minutes.

  2. Place the basin of boiling syrup in another basin of boiling water.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the salt.

  2. Stir the egg yolks into the syrup.

  3. Stir rapidly for 3 minutes.

  4. Remove the basin from the heat and place it in a pan of ice water.

  5. Beat until cold.

Finish and freeze

  1. Add the vanilla and cream.

  2. 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.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  5. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the base and, boiled with water, forms a syrup that gives body to the ice cream.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook gently and add richness and a smooth texture.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream creamy and soft rather than icy.
Vanilla extract
Provides the main aroma and flavour of the ice cream.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg yolks into the hot syrup. Egg yolk proteins thicken when heated but can scramble into lumps if they meet too much heat at once. Setting the basin in boiling water and stirring rapidly spreads the heat evenly so the custard thickens smoothly.

“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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