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Dessert

Caramel Cream Ice

A frozen dessert made from caramelized sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, egg yolks, milk, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Caramel Cream Ice

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Boil 3 ounces of sugar in a saucepan until it turns dark brown without burning.

  2. Add lemon peel and a stick of cinnamon, then boil for 1-2 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Stir in ½ cup of water, 6 egg yolks, and 2 cups of whole milk.

  2. Cook over low heat until thickened.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Finish and freeze

  1. Fold in ½ pint of whipped cream.

  2. Freeze.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Sugar
Caramelizes to give the ice cream its deep, bittersweet flavor and color.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they heat and help give the ice cream a smooth, rich texture.
Whole milk
Provides the liquid base and fat that make the ice cream creamy.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and air, making the frozen ice cream lighter and softer.

The step that matters

Caramelizing the sugar. Sugar must turn dark brown without burning. Once it goes past amber into a scorched, bitter state, the flavor is ruined, and it can seize when liquid is added.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, egg, milk, cream. 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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