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Dessert

Brown Bread Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from cream, sugar, caramel, vanilla, and toasted Boston brown bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Brown Bread Ice Cream

Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Brown Bread Ice Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the bread

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place one or more slices of Boston brown bread in the oven until dry and crisp.

  3. Run the dried bread through a meat grinder to make moderately fine crumbs.

Make the base

  1. Scald half of the cream with all the sugar, then cool it.

  2. Add the caramel, vanilla, and remaining cream to the cooled mixture.

Freeze

  1. Freeze the mixture, adding the bread crumbs near the end of the freezing process.

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

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

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

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  4. Bread + vanillatop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together497 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

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

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

Cream
Provides fat and richness, giving the ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Boston brown bread crumbs
Adds toasted, malty flavor and a slightly crunchy texture to the frozen base.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers its freezing point, keeping the ice cream softer.
Caramel
Adds deeper, toasted sweetness that complements the brown bread flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the bread crumbs near the end of freezing. If crumbs go in too early they soak up moisture and turn soggy and dull. Adding them late keeps them dry and crisp in the finished ice cream.

“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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