Skip to main content
Dessert

Caramel Ice Cream

A custard ice cream flavored with caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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. In a double boiler, heat the milk.

  2. Beat the eggs until light.

  3. Add the sugar and flour to the eggs and beat until smooth.

  4. Combine the egg mixture with the heated milk and cook thoroughly.

Add the caramel and finish

  1. In a frying pan, melt 1 cup of sugar until it browns slightly, then add it to the custard.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then stir in 1 pint of thick cream and enough milk to fill a half gallon freezer.

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. Flour + milktop 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).

Flour and milk 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 and give the ice cream a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Stabilises the custard so it thickens without curdling and holds a smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and, melted to a brown caramel, adds deep toasted flavour.
Thick cream
Adds fat that makes the frozen ice cream creamy and soft rather than icy.

The step that matters

Melting the sugar for the caramel. Sugar left too long past light browning turns bitter and burnt, and it can seize when it meets the cool custard. Watch the colour closely and remove it from the heat once it is golden-amber.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes