Skip to main content
Dessert

Ice Puddings

A chilled custard dessert made with milk, vanilla, sugar, cream, liqueur, lemon juice, and optional jelly or isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Ice Puddings

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by boiling milk with a stick of vanilla and sugar until thickened.

  2. Remove the vanilla stick and let the custard cool.

  3. If the custard is not smooth, strain it.

Freeze and serve

  1. Add heavy cream, Noyeau or Maraschino, lemon juice, and jelly or isinglass to the custard.

  2. Pour the mixture into a pudding mold.

  3. Freeze the pudding as you would for dessert ices.

  4. Serve on a napkin.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Vanilla + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Vanilla and sugar 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

Milk
Forms the base of the custard, which thickens when heated with sugar.
Heavy cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture that stays soft after freezing.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers its freezing point, keeping the pudding softer.
Noyeau or maraschino liqueur
Adds aroma and flavour, and its alcohol also keeps the frozen texture softer.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.
Jelly or isinglass
Sets the mixture so the frozen pudding holds its shape when unmoulded.

The step that matters

Freeze the pudding as you would for dessert ices. Freezing without stirring can form large ice crystals, making the pudding grainy. Because the record gives no method or time, the cook should follow standard dessert ice technique and check the texture as it sets.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesVanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes