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Dessert

Caramel Ice Cream

A custard ice cream flavored with caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Caramel Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until it boils.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, and flour.

  3. Stir the egg mixture into the boiling milk and cook for 20 minutes, stirring often.

Add the caramel and freeze

  1. In a small frying pan, heat the small cup of sugar over medium heat until it melts and begins to smoke.

  2. Pour the caramelized sugar into the milk mixture and let it cool.

  3. Once cool, add the cream and strain the mixture into an ice cream maker.

  4. Freeze according to the manufacturer's instructions.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Egg proteins set when cooked, thickening the milk into a smooth custard base.
Flour
Starch thickens the custard and helps it hold a smooth, stable texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and carries the flavour through the ice cream.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream rich and soft rather than icy.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and, when melted, forms the caramel that flavours the ice cream.

The step that matters

Melting the sugar for the caramel. Sugar can go from amber to burnt within seconds once it smokes. Burnt sugar turns bitter, so pull the pan off the heat as soon as it melts to a golden colour.

“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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