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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 sugar in a saucepan until dark brown, being careful not to burn it.

  2. Add lemon peel and cinnamon stick; boil for 1-2 minutes.

Make the custard

  1. Stir in water, egg yolks, and milk; cook until thickened.

Finish and freeze

  1. Strain the mixture and fold in whipped cream.

  2. Freeze until solid.

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
Provides sweetness and, when cooked to dark brown, a deep caramel flavor.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard as they cook and add richness and a smooth texture.
Whole milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and contributes creaminess.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a light texture when folded in as whipped cream.

The step that matters

Browning the sugar without burning it. Sugar darkens quickly once it passes golden, and burnt caramel turns bitter. That bitterness carries into the custard, so the caramel should be taken to deep brown and no further.

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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