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 ↓
Ice Cream, No. 1
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Put the milk in a pail and set it in a kettle of hot water.
Add the sugar and let it scald.
Wet the corn starch in a little milk and scald until smooth.
Beat the egg yolks and add them just as you take the milk from the stove.
Strain the mixture through a gravy strainer.
Finish the mixture
Beat the cream to a froth and fold in the beaten egg whites.
Stir this into the custard when cool and flavor as desired.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Milk + coffeetop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,202 recipes
Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).
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Milk + corntop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together6,955 recipes
Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).
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Corn + coffeetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together247 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
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Coffee + creamtop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,339 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Milk
- Forms the liquid base of the custard that the other ingredients set into.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and softens the frozen texture of the ice cream.
- Corn starch
- Thickens the custard so it holds body and resists icy crystals.
- Egg yolks
- Thicken the custard and add richness through their fat and emulsifying proteins.
- Egg whites
- Beaten and folded in, they add air and lightness to the mixture.
- Cream
- Whipped to a froth, it adds fat and a smooth, rich texture.
The step that matters
Adding the egg yolks. Add the beaten yolks just as the milk leaves the stove, not before. Yolk proteins thicken and can curdle or scramble if they meet very hot milk too early, leaving a grainy custard.
“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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