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Dessert

Walnut Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made with milk, condensed milk, sugar, egg whites, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Condensed milk and sugar work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 804 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Walnut Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix the sugar, condensed milk, and egg whites.

  2. Add the milk to the mixture.

  3. Cook in a double boiler for 1 hour.

Freeze

  1. Cool the mixture in a freezer.

  2. Once cooled, add the well-beaten condensed milk and chopped walnuts.

  3. Freeze until firm.

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. Condensed milk + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + walnuttop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,236 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms most of the liquid base and adds creaminess through its fat and milk solids.
Condensed milk
Adds sweetness and a thick, creamy body to the mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the ice cream and keeps it softer by lowering the freezing point.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a nutty flavour to the frozen texture.
Egg whites
Thicken the cooked base and add structure to the custard.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture gently in the double boiler. Gentle, indirect heat thickens the egg proteins evenly without scrambling them. Higher direct heat can curdle the eggs and leave lumps in the base.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits about as well
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Walnutthe original
  4. Peanutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, condensed milk, sugar, egg. 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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