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Dessert

Frozen Custard

A frozen custard made with flour, milk, raisins, egg yolks, cherries, sugar, citron, heavy cream, and sherry wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Frozen Custard

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Frozen Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard base

  1. Dissolve the flour in a little cold milk.

  2. In a bowl, combine the dissolved flour, 1 pint of milk, raisins, egg yolks, cherries, sugar, and chopped citron.

Freeze

  1. Churn the mixture in a 2-quart ice cream freezer until it begins to freeze, about 10 minutes.

  2. Stir in the heavy cream vigorously, then add the fruit and sherry wine.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help the custard set smooth and creamy as it freezes.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard holds body and resists icy texture.
Heavy cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen custard creamy and tender rather than icy.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer when frozen.

The step that matters

Stir in the heavy cream vigorously. Vigorous stirring breaks up ice crystals as the mixture begins to freeze and folds in the cream evenly. This keeps the texture smooth instead of grainy or icy.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Strawberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, sugar, cream, sherry, wine. 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.

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