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Dessert

Cream Caramels

A layered chocolate and sugar caramel dessert with lemon flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream Caramels

Ingredients

Directions

Make the chocolate layer

  1. Combine chocolate, sugar, butter, and cream in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture reaches a candy stage, about 20 minutes, then remove from heat.

  3. Flavor with vanilla.

  4. Pour half of the mixture into a buttered bread tin.

  5. Let it harden.

Make the lemon layer

  1. Mix 3 cups sugar and 1 cup cream in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for 20 minutes, stirring carefully to avoid scorching.

  3. Flavor with lemon juice and rind.

  4. Beat constantly until it cools and thickens.

  5. Spread the lemon layer over the hardened chocolate layer.

Finish the top layer

  1. Moisten remaining chocolate with milk and warm it up.

  2. Pour over top as final layer.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Chocolate + creamtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,466 recipes

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

  5. Chocolate + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baker's chocolate
Provides richness, body and the chocolate flavor of the firm bottom layer.
Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when cooked, sets the texture of the caramel as it thickens.
Cream
Adds richness and a soft, smooth texture to the caramel.
Butter
Adds fat for a smoother mouthfeel and a softer bite.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma to the lemon layer.

The step that matters

Stir the cooking mixture constantly. Constant stirring keeps the sugar and cream from scorching on the bottom of the pan. Cooking to the candy stage concentrates the sugar, so how far it cooks determines whether the caramel sets firm or soft.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (chocolate, sugar, butter, cream, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against chocolate, sugar, butter, cream, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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