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Caramel Icing

A simple caramel glaze made by boiling sugar, butter, and milk, then flavored with vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Caramel Icing

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 Icing

Ingredients

Directions

Make the icing

  1. In a saucepan, combine the sugar, butter, and sweet milk.

  2. Boil briskly for 10 minutes, stirring constantly to prevent burning.

Finish and cool

  1. Remove from heat and add vanilla extract.

  2. Stir the mixture until it cools.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Granulated sugar
Provides sweetness and, when heated with milk, forms the caramel base of the icing.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth, tender texture in the finished icing.
Sweet milk
Supplies moisture and milk proteins that brown during boiling, adding caramel flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring while the icing cools. As the mixture cools, sugar crystallizes. Stirring steadily keeps the crystals fine and smooth, while letting it set unstirred can make the icing grainy or too hard to spread.

“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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