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Ices and Ice Cream

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

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 ↓

Ices and Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil 3 pints of milk in a double boiler.

  2. Beat yolks and whites of eggs separately.

  3. Mix yolks with the remaining pint of milk and stir into boiling milk. Boil for 2 minutes.

  4. Remove from heat, add sugar, and let it dissolve.

  5. Strain the mixture through a cloth while hot, then cool it.

  6. Add cream and vanilla to the cooled mixture.

Freeze

  1. Prepare ice by pounding it until small, about the size of a hickory nut.

  2. Pack the ice and salt in layers around the freezer, using ¾ ice and ¼ salt.

  3. Pour the custard into the freezer, filling it two-thirds full.

  4. Cover and churn for 10 minutes. Pack down the ice and drain off water.

  5. Repeat packing and churning until the cream is frozen and the beater won't turn.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 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. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and enrich its texture as they cook gently with the milk.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, providing body and milk flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream smooth and rich rather than icy.
Vanilla
Adds aroma and flavour to the finished ice cream.

The step that matters

Straining and cooling the custard before freezing. Straining while hot removes any cooked egg bits, and cooling the custard fully before churning keeps the freezer working efficiently and the texture smooth rather than grainy.

“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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