Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 Cream Ice
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Prepare the custard according to the recipe.
In a small saucepan, combine the sugar with a few drops of water and boil until it turns deep golden-brown.
Make the caramel cream
Add the cream to the caramel and stir until boiling, then mix it into the custard.
Let the mixture cool, add the Benedictine, and freeze.
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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Cream + sugartop 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
- Custard
- Forms the creamy base that the ice cream is built on.
- Loaf sugar
- Caramelises to give the ice cream its deep golden, toasty flavour.
- Cream
- Adds richness and fat, giving a smoother, softer frozen texture.
- Benedictine
- Adds aromatic flavour; alcohol also keeps the ice cream softer when frozen.
The step that matters
Boiling the sugar to deep golden-brown caramel. Sugar can go from golden to burnt very quickly, and burnt caramel tastes bitter. Pull it off the heat at the right colour, then add the cream carefully, since hot caramel can splatter and seize when liquid is added.
“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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