Skip to main content
Dessert

New York Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with milk, cream, eggs, sugar, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

New York Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a clean copper pan, mix sugar and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add milk and cream.

  3. Heat over moderate heat.

  4. Stir with a large egg-beater until the mixture comes to a boil.

  5. Remove from heat.

  6. Strain through a fine sieve.

Flavour and freeze

  1. Add vanilline crystal to the hot mixture.

  2. Stir until cold.

  3. Freeze the mixture.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites thicken the custard base and give the ice cream a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and scoopable.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the ice cream rich and creamy and helps it feel smooth on the tongue.
Milk
Supplies water and milk solids that form the base and set into a frozen texture.

The step that matters

Stir until the mixture comes to a boil. Heating the eggs gently while stirring thickens the custard without scrambling it. Straining afterward removes any bits that did set.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes