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Dessert

Caramel Cream

A sweet dessert made by boiling milk with sugar, rice, and lemon rind, then cooling in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Caramel Cream

Why it works: Milk and rice are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Caramel Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the caramel

  1. Combine loaf sugar and cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil quickly until it turns dark golden brown.

  3. Pour the caramel into a dry mold, turning it to coat the inner surface completely.

Make the cream

  1. Add the lemon rind and castor sugar to the boiling milk.

  2. Sprinkle in the ground rice and boil gently for about 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the lemon rind.

Set and chill

  1. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold.

  2. Let it cool in a cold place until set.

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 + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  2. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream and gives it its body and richness.
Ground rice
Thickens the cream as its starch swells and gels during gentle boiling, so it sets firm.
Loaf sugar
Melts and browns into caramel, which coats the mold and adds sweetness and colour.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cream evenly because its fine grains dissolve quickly in hot milk.
Lemon rind
Infuses the milk with citrus aroma; it is removed before setting.

The step that matters

Boil the sugar to dark golden brown. Sugar darkens quickly once it starts to colour, and it turns bitter and burnt if left too long. Stop at dark golden brown so the caramel tastes sweet and coats the mold evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rice, sugar. 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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