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Dessert

Delicious Ice Cream

A homemade ice cream made with cream, milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and candied cherries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Delicious Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.

  2. In a bowl, mix the sugar, salt, and flour thoroughly.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the mixture and beat well.

  4. Gradually add the egg mixture to the boiled milk, stirring constantly until thick.

Freeze

  1. Cool the mixture, then add the vanilla and cream, and freeze.

  2. Add the cherries after it begins to 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set when heated, giving the ice cream body.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Rich cream
Adds fat, which gives the ice cream a smooth, rich texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that the eggs and flour thicken.
Flour
Helps stabilise and thicken the custard so it holds together.

The step that matters

Gradually add the egg mixture to the boiled milk, stirring constantly until thick.. Adding the eggs too fast or without constant stirring can scramble them. Stirring keeps the proteins evenly dispersed so the custard thickens smoothly.

“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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