Skip to main content
Dessert

Brown-bread Ice Cream

A custard-like ice cream made with browned bread, sugar, milk, sponge biscuits, cream, and maraschino.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Brown-bread Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine the browned bread, sugar, milk, sponge biscuits, and cream in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over gentle heat until it thickens like custard.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Prepare the crumbs

  1. Brown the additional slices of bread in the oven.

  2. Crumble and sift the browned bread.

Freeze and finish

  1. Once the mixture is frozen, fold in the bread crumbs and maraschino.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Browned bread
Toasting gives the bread a nutty, caramelised flavour that carries into the custard base.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream smooth and rich rather than icy.
Milk
Provides the liquid that the custard thickens in, adding body and moisture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer when frozen.
Sponge biscuits
Add starch and sponge structure that helps thicken and flavour the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard over gentle heat. Egg-free custards of this kind thicken as starches and proteins set, and too much heat can scorch the milk or make it grainy. Gentle, steady stirring keeps the base smooth and evenly thickened.

“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.

More brown bread ice cream recipes

Boston 3 See all 14 →

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesBaking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipes