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Caramel Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a double boiler.

  2. Beat the egg, flour, and 1 cup of sugar together until light.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the milk and stir constantly until thickened, about 20 minutes.

Make the caramel

  1. In a frying pan, heat the remaining 1 cup of sugar until it becomes liquid and brown.

Finish and freeze

  1. Cool the mixture, then add the cream 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. Sugar + creamtop 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. 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).

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

Egg
Sets with heat as the custard thickens, giving the base body and a rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the custard and helps it stay smooth rather than grainy.
Sugar
Sweetens the base, and when browned to caramel it adds deep, toasted flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds moisture and dairy flavor.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream smooth and creamy rather than icy.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the hot milk. Egg proteins set with heat, so if the custard is not stirred constantly it can curdle or turn lumpy instead of smoothly thickening.

“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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