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Dessert

New York Ice Cream

A homemade ice cream made with milk, flour, eggs, sugar, cream, and optional flavoring or crushed fruit.

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 ↓

New York Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Dissolve the flour in a little water to make a paste and stir it into the milk until slightly thickened.

  3. Cover and cook for 30 minutes.

  4. Beat the eggs with the sugar until dissolved and thickened, then strain into the milk mixture.

Finish and freeze

  1. Cool the mixture, then add the cream and desired flavoring.

  2. Freeze the mixture, adding crushed fruit if desired.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 and add richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a paste-like base that gives body to the ice cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and helps keep the frozen texture softer.
Cream
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the other ingredients thicken and flavor.

The step that matters

Beat the eggs with the sugar, then strain into the milk mixture. Eggs thicken when heated gently but can curdle or scramble if they meet hot liquid too fast. Warm the milk and add the egg mixture slowly while stirring to keep the custard smooth.

“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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