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Caramee Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with caramel and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Caramee Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Whisk in the eggs and flavoring.

  3. Stir in the granulated sugar.

  4. Cook until it thickens like custard.

Make the caramel

  1. In a separate pan, dissolve 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Heat until it becomes liquid caramel.

  3. Quickly stir the caramel into the hot custard.

  4. If lumpy, strain the mixture.

Finish and freeze

  1. Combine the custard with the cream.

  2. Add vanilla flavoring.

  3. 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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and set it into a smooth base.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and, when melted, forms the caramel flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Cream
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture in the frozen ice cream.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until it thickens. Eggs thicken as they heat, but overheating can scramble them into lumps. Cook gently and strain if lumps form, so the base stays smooth before freezing.

“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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