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Dessert

Caramel Ice Cream

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

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 custard

  1. Mix the corn starch and milk until smooth.

  2. Beat the eggs in a separate bowl.

  3. Melt the sugar in a skillet over heat until smooth.

  4. Stir the melted sugar into the hot custard mixture.

Cool and freeze

  1. Let the mixture cool.

  2. Add vanilla extract.

  3. Stir in the cream.

  4. 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Corn + milktop 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

Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture so the custard becomes smooth and creamy.
Eggs
Add richness and help thicken the custard as they set with heat.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch and eggs thicken into custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when melted, a caramel flavor and color.
Cream
Adds fat, which gives the frozen ice cream a smooth, rich texture.

The step that matters

Melting the sugar in the skillet. Sugar can go from amber to burnt within seconds. Burnt sugar tastes bitter and can make the whole batch unpleasant, so keep the heat moderate and stir until it is smooth and evenly coloured.

“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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