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Dessert

Ice-cbeam

A frozen custard made from cream, milk, eggs, sugar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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-cbeam

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately until very light.

  2. Whip the cream until stiff using a large egg beater.

Make the mixture

  1. Combine the whipped cream with the milk and egg yolks.

  2. Sweeten and flavor to your taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into a freezer.

  4. Add the beaten egg whites.

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

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

  2. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  5. 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

Cream
Whipped to stiffness, it gives the frozen dessert a rich, light, creamy body.
Egg whites
Beaten air holds the mixture light and keeps the frozen texture from becoming dense.
Egg yolks
Emulsify fat and water and add richness and a smooth, custard-like texture.
Milk
Provides the liquid base that freezes into the body of the dessert.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg whites. Egg whites must be beaten until very light and folded in gently, since deflating them removes the air that keeps the frozen mixture light.

“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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