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Dessert

Frozen Custard

A chilled dessert made from eggs, milk, sugar, flavoring, and ice, set in a freezer.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Frozen Custard

Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Frozen Custard

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Break the eggs into a deep bowl.

  2. In a porcelain kettle, heat the sweet milk until warm.

  3. Stir in the sugar until dissolved, then bring to a full boil.

  4. Slowly stir in the beaten eggs while the milk is boiling, stirring constantly until it thickens.

  5. Pour the mixture into a large bowl or deep tin bucket and set it in cold water, stirring until the water warms.

  6. Change the water and let it stand until ready to freeze.

Freeze and churn

  1. Place the freezer in a tub filled with ice and salt, layering ice and salt alternately.

  2. Pour the custard into the freezer and add your chosen flavor extract, stirring well.

  3. Cover tightly and let it stand for a short time, then churn until hard, scraping the sides occasionally.

  4. Wipe the top of the freezer before opening.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set when stirred into the hot milk, giving body and richness.
Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens and freezes into the texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers its freezing point, keeping it softer when churned.
Ice and coarse sea salt
Salt lowers the ice's temperature so the freezer tub gets cold enough to freeze the custard.

The step that matters

Stirring the beaten eggs into the boiling milk. Eggs scramble if added too quickly or left unstirred in hot liquid. Adding them slowly while stirring constantly lets the proteins thicken the custard smoothly instead of curdling it.

“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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