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Dessert

Walnut Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with walnuts, milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Walnut Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Beat the eggs with 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Combine the eggs and milk in a double boiler, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens.

  3. Add the salt and let it cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Once cooled, mix in the cream and walnut meats, then 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.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Walnut + meattop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,035 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Walnut + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set with gentle heat, giving the base body and structure.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a custard.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture that stays soft when frozen.
Walnut meats
Contribute nutty flavor and a fine, textured crunch to the frozen cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and keeps the frozen ice cream softer and less icy.

The step that matters

Thickening the custard over the double boiler. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Constant stirring and low heat keep the mixture smooth, because overheating can curdle the eggs into lumps.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Pecansfits about as well
  2. Almondfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Nutsfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, milk, cream, sugar, egg. 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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