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Chocolate Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with chocolate and vanilla.

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

Chocolate Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine milk, egg yolks, sugar, and flour in a saucepan to make a custard.

  2. Dissolve the chocolate over steam from a kettle.

  3. Add the melted chocolate to the custard and strain the mixture.

Finish and freeze

  1. Stir in the cream and add vanilla to taste.

  2. Freeze the mixture until solid.

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. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness through their emulsifying proteins.
Flour
Stabilises the custard so it thickens smoothly without curdling.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream smooth and creamy rather than icy.
Baker's chocolate
Provides the chocolate flavour and some fat that adds body to the base.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture after adding the chocolate. Straining removes any bits of cooked egg or unmelted chocolate, keeping the custard smooth. Heating the custard gently prevents the egg yolks from scrambling.

“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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