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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from milk, eggs, lemon rind, sugar, coconut, cream, and lemon juice.

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

Cocoa-nut Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Cook the milk, eggs, lemon rind, and sugar in a custard kettle until thickened.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture.

  2. When it is half frozen, add the grated cocoa-nut, whipped cream, and lemon juice.

  3. Continue freezing until fully set.

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. Milk + cocoatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Thicken the custard base as they cook, giving the ice cream a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, producing a creamy texture that feels smooth on the palate.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer when frozen.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing moisture and dairy flavour.
Grated fresh cocoa-nut
Adds coconut flavour and a textural contrast to the smooth frozen base.

The step that matters

Adding the cocoa-nut, cream and lemon juice at half frozen. Adding these when the mixture is only partly frozen lets them mix in evenly. Fully frozen ice cream is too firm to fold into, and the cream would not blend smoothly.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, lemon, 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.

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