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Golden Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with vanilla and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and sherry work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 506 recipes. Both carry piperonal, which smells bitter, coconut. The science ↓

Golden Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine sugar and water in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves.

  2. Boil for 5 minutes.

Make the custard and freeze

  1. Mix a small amount of syrup with the beaten egg yolks until light.

  2. Add the egg mixture to the syrup in the saucepan and stir until it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon.

  3. Remove from heat, strain, and cool while stirring.

  4. Once cool, add rich cream, vanilla, and sherry, then freeze.

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. Vanilla + sherrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together506 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  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. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

Sugar
Sweetens the base and, dissolved into syrup, keeps the finished ice cream smooth and soft.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat and add richness and a smooth, creamy structure.
Rich cream
Adds fat, which gives the frozen ice cream a rich, tender texture.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma and a rounded vanilla flavour.
Sherry
Adds a fragrant, aromatic flavour note to the custard base.

The step that matters

Thickening the egg mixture. Egg yolks thicken as they heat, but too much heat scrambles them into lumps. Heat gently and stir constantly until the custard coats the back of a spoon, then remove it from the heat promptly.

“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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