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Dessert

Ices and Ice Cream

A cold dessert made by freezing a custard mixture of milk, cream, eggs, sugar, 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 ↓

Ices and Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil 3 pints of milk in a custard kettle or a pail set in boiling water.

  2. Beat the yolks and whites of the eggs separately.

  3. Mix the yolks with the remaining pint of milk and stir slowly into the boiling milk.

  4. Boil for 2 minutes, then remove from heat and add sugar, stirring until dissolved.

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

  6. Add the rich cream and vanilla to the cooled mixture.

  7. Set the custard and the unwhipped egg whites in a cool place until needed.

Freeze

  1. Prepare ice by pounding it in a coarse coffee sack until the lumps are small.

  2. Pack the freezer with layers of ice and coarse sea salt, starting and ending with ice.

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

  4. Replace the cover and begin turning the freezer.

  5. After 10 minutes, pack the ice down, drain off excess water, add more ice, and continue turning until the cream is well frozen.

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 as they set, giving the ice cream a rich, smooth body.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream soft and scoopable.
Rich cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream creamy and smooth rather than icy.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that freezes into the ice cream.

The step that matters

Cooking the custard after adding the yolks. Stirring the yolks slowly into the hot milk and boiling only briefly keeps them from scrambling. Egg proteins set with heat, so overheating turns the custard 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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