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Dessert

French Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with sweet cream, egg yolks, gelatin, sugar, and vanilla or bitter almond extract.

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

French Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in enough water to cover it for 1 hour.

  2. Strain the gelatine.

  3. Stir the strained gelatine into 1 pint of boiling hot cream.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with the sugar.

  2. Gradually add the boiling mixture.

  3. Heat until it begins to thicken, but do not boil.

  4. Remove from heat.

  5. Flavor the mixture.

  6. Stir in the other pint of whipped cream.

  7. Beat the whipped cream into the custard until it reaches the consistency of sponge cake batter.

Freeze in a mold

  1. Dip a mold in cold water.

  2. Pour the mixture into the mold.

  3. Set the mold on ice to form.

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. 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

Sweet cream
Provides richness and body, and whipped cream gives the dessert its light, airy texture.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their emulsifying fats and proteins.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when unmolded.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and softens the texture of the frozen dessert.

The step that matters

Heat the custard without boiling. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but past a certain point they scramble and curdle. Stopping when the custard just begins to thicken keeps it smooth.

“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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