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Dessert

Neapolitan Ice Cream

A chilled dessert made by freezing a custard mixture with Maraschino liqueur, then cooling in an ice box surrounded by ice and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Neapolitan Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a pan, mix the water, egg yolks, and Maraschino liqueur.

  2. Add sugar to taste and place the pan over low heat.

  3. Whisk continuously until the mixture is almost boiling.

  4. Remove from heat and continue whisking until it foams.

Freeze and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a Neapolitan ice box.

  2. Surround the box with small pieces of ice mixed with coarse sea salt for 4-5 hours.

  3. Dip the box in warm water for a second. Remove the cover. Let it slide out.

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. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Egg yolks
Emulsify and thicken the custard, giving the ice cream its rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and lowers the freezing point so the ice cream stays softer.
Maraschino liqueur
Adds aroma and flavour and lowers the freezing point slightly for a softer texture.

The step that matters

Whisking the custard over low heat. Egg yolks set when overheated and can curdle into lumps. Whisking constantly over low heat keeps the custard smooth and thickened, stopping just short of boiling.

“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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