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Dessert

Caramel Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from milk, cream, sugar, eggs, and vanilla, sweetened with caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Caramel Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel custard

  1. Melt 1 cup of sugar in a skillet until it turns into a brown syrup.

  2. Add the heated milk to the syrup.

  3. In a bowl, cream together the egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar, and corn starch.

  4. Stir the creamed mixture into the milk and syrup, and let it boil while stirring constantly.

  5. If the mixture is lumpy, strain it through a sieve.

Finish and freeze

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites once the mixture is cold.

  2. Add the cream and vanilla extract, then 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  5. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites add lightness when folded in.
Corn starch
Thickens the custard so it holds a smooth, scoopable body.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and browns to a caramel flavor when melted.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Cream
Adds fat for a richer, smoother texture in the frozen result.

The step that matters

Stirring the custard while it boils. Starch thickens only when it boils, and constant stirring prevents scorching on the bottom and lumps forming. Lumps that remain can be strained out.

“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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