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Dessert

Caramel Cream

A sweet dessert made by boiling milk with sugar, lemon rind, and ground rice, then setting 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 until the mixture 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 caster sugar to the boiling milk.

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

  3. Remove the lemon rind.

  4. Pour the mixture into the prepared mold.

  5. Let it cool 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 body of the cream, providing richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the cream its set structure.
Loaf sugar
Melts and caramelizes into the dark syrup that coats the mold and becomes the sauce.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the cream and adds a fine, even sweetness to the milk.

The step that matters

Coating the mold with caramel. The caramel must be cooked to a dark golden-brown and poured while still fluid so it coats the mold evenly. Thin or uneven coating leaves bare spots, and the caramel can harden quickly as it cools, so it needs to be turned right away.

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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