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Dessert

Caramel Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from milk, cream, sugar, and a junket tablet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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

Prepare

  1. Crush the junket tablet and dissolve it in cold water.

  2. Heat the milk and cream to 98°F (37°C).

Make the custard

  1. Add the caramelized sugar and stir until thoroughly dissolved.

  2. If the mixture is too warm, cool it to the proper temperature.

  3. Add the dissolved junket tablet and let it stand in a warm room until the mixture jellies.

Chill and freeze

  1. Chill and freeze the mixture.

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. Sugar + junkettop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together82 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + junkettop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

Milk
Forms the base of the mixture and sets into a soft, creamy body with the junket.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture in the frozen dessert.
Sugar
Caramelized to add sweetness and a toasted caramel flavor.
Junket tablet
Rennet-based tablet that causes the warm milk mixture to set into a soft gel.

The step that matters

Add the junket at the right temperature. Rennet works best within a narrow warm range. If the mixture is too hot, the enzyme can be weakened or destroyed and the mixture may fail to jelly, so the temperature should be corrected before the dissolved tablet is added.

“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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