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Dessert

Brown-bread Ice Cream

A custard-like ice cream made with browned bread, sugar, milk, sponge biscuits, cream, and maraschino.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Brown-bread Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Combine the browned bread, sugar, milk, sponge biscuits, and cream in a saucepan.

  2. Stir over gentle heat until the mixture thickens like custard.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

Add the crumbs and finish

  1. Brown two more slices of bread in the oven.

  2. Crumb and sift the browned bread like breadcrumbs.

  3. Fold in the breadcrumbs.

  4. Add the maraschino.

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. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Bread + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together319 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the frozen mixture a smooth, soft texture.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the ice cream rich and creamy rather than icy.
Milk
Provides liquid that thickens with gentle heat into a custard base.
Sponge biscuits
Add body and a light, tender crumb to the custard.
Browned bread
Adds a toasted, nutty aroma and flavour to the custard and crumbs.

The step that matters

Stir over gentle heat until the mixture thickens like custard. Egg-free custards thicken from starch and protein setting gently; high heat can scorch the milk and cream or cause curdling, leaving a grainy, uneven base.

“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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