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Dessert

Caramel Ice Cream

A frozen dessert made from caramel, cream, egg yolks, and lemon or vinegar and extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Caramel Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the caramel

  1. Boil the sugar in a saucepan until it turns into a brown caramel.

  2. Pour the caramel into a porcelain bowl.

  3. Let it cool in a cool place.

  4. Once cool, pound the caramel to a powder using a mortar or rolling pin.

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cream in a separate pot.

  2. Beat the egg yolks until light.

  3. Gradually add the beaten yolks to the cream.

  4. Add the lemon juice (or vinegar and extract) to the mixture.

Set and shape

  1. Butter a dish.

  2. Pour the mixture into the dish to about an inch thick.

  3. When cool, remove the lemon peel.

  4. Pull the mixture until white.

  5. Shape as desired.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sugar
Provides sweetness and, when boiled brown, the caramel flavour and colour.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, giving the finished ice cream a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the mixture, adding body and a custard-like richness.
Lemon
Its juice adds acidity that brightens the flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Gradually add the beaten yolks to the cream. Adding the yolks slowly, while stirring, tempers them so the hot cream warms them gently. Dumping them in at once can scramble the eggs into lumps instead of a smooth custard.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, egg, butter):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, egg, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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