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Vanilla Ice Cream

A custard-based vanilla ice cream made by heating cream, egg, sugar, and vanilla bean, then freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 custard

  1. Mix the cream, egg, and sugar thoroughly in a saucepan.

  2. Add the vanilla bean pieces and heat over medium heat, stirring constantly until just before boiling.

  3. Remove from heat and strain through a fine sieve.

  4. Let the mixture cool, then pour it into a freezer.

Freeze

  1. Stir until well frozen.

  2. Repack the freezer with ice.

  3. Cover and let the ice cream freeze completely.

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. Cream + sugartop 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. Egg + sugartop 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

Fresh cream
Provides fat that makes the ice cream rich and smooth.
Egg
Its proteins thicken the custard and help give a creamy structure.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the texture softer.
Vanilla bean
Adds the characteristic vanilla aroma to the custard.

The step that matters

Heating the custard until just before boiling. Heating over medium heat while stirring constantly cooks the egg enough to thicken the base without scrambling it. Boiling can curdle the egg, leaving a grainy texture.

“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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