Skip to main content
Dessert

Egoless Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from milk, cream, sugar, arrowroot, and egg whites.

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

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Egoless Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Wet the arrowroot with a little cold milk.

  2. Scald the milk by placing it in a tin pail set in a pot of boiling water.

  3. Let it boil, then stir in the sugar and arrowroot.

  4. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Finish and freeze

  1. Add flavoring to taste and 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + arrowroottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together817 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

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

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

Arrowroot
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, creamy base as it heats.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the sugar and arrowroot are cooked into.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the texture of the frozen ice cream.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, creamier frozen texture.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff froth, they add lightness and air to the mixture.

The step that matters

Letting the mixture boil after adding the arrowroot. Arrowroot only thickens fully when it reaches a boil, so the mixture must be brought to a full boil after the sugar and arrowroot are stirred in. Under-heating leaves it thin and starchy.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Sweet potatofits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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

You might also like

Arrowroot PuddingArrowroot Pudding46 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes