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 ↓
Carmel Sugar
Ingredients
Directions
Place 1 cup of granulated sugar in a granite stew pan over high heat.
Stir rapidly until it boils and resembles molasses.
Pour the caramel immediately into the boiling cream.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Granulated sugar
- Melts and caramelizes to form the sweet, colored base of the sauce.
- Cream
- Adds moisture and richness, and its fat gives the sauce a smooth, creamy body.
The step that matters
Pour the caramel immediately into the boiling cream. Hot caramel can seize into hard lumps if it cools, and adding it to boiling cream makes the mixture bubble up vigorously. Pouring promptly while both are hot keeps the sauce smooth and lets the sugar dissolve evenly into the liquid.
“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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