Why it works: Milk and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 77,875 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Ice Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Make the custard
Boil the milk in a saucepan.
Dissolve the cornstarch in the cold milk and stir it into the boiling milk.
Cook for five minutes, then strain the mixture.
Flavor and freeze
Add the sugar and flavoring, and mix well.
Let the mixture cool completely before freezing.
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.
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Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together77,875 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 the liquid base and provides most of the creamy texture of the finished ice cream.
- Cornstarch
- Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the mixture body so it freezes smoothly.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and lowers the freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer and less icy.
The step that matters
Stirring the cornstarch into the boiling milk. Cornstarch only thickens once it is heated, and dissolving it in cold milk first keeps it from clumping. Cooking it for the full five minutes lets the starch fully thicken the base.
“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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