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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) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Caramel Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Place milk in a double boiler and bring to a boil.

  2. Beat together the first cup of sugar, flour, salt, and eggs, then stir into the milk.

  3. Cook for 20 minutes, stirring mostly, and after 15 minutes, caramelize the second cup of sugar by melting it in a granite pan over the fire until browned.

  4. Turn the hot caramelized sugar into the custard and mix thoroughly.

Finish and freeze

  1. Remove from heat, cool, drain, add cream and flavoring, and 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 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
Thicken the custard as they cook, giving the base body and a creamy texture.
Flour
Stabilizes the custard so it thickens smoothly and resists curdling during cooking.
Sugar (caramelized)
Adds deep caramel flavor and color, and sweetness to the base.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture that softens the ice cream.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the other ingredients thicken.

The step that matters

Caramelizing the second cup of sugar. Sugar can go from amber to burnt quickly. Burnt sugar turns bitter, so it should be removed from the heat at a deep golden brown and mixed in promptly while hot.

“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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