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Caramel Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream flavored with caramel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Caramel Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, beat together the eggs, sugar, and flour.

  3. Add the egg mixture to the boiling milk and stir until it thickens into a rich custard.

Make the caramel

  1. In a separate pan, melt the brown sugar over low heat, stirring until it becomes brown and liquid.

Combine and freeze

  1. Add the caramel to the custard and mix well.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then stir in the heavy cream.

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

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

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 set when heated, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Stabilizes the custard so it thickens smoothly and resists curdling.
Brown sugar
Melts into caramel that adds deep, toasty flavor and sweetness.
Heavy cream
Adds fat that makes the frozen ice cream rich and creamy in texture.

The step that matters

Stirring the egg mixture into the boiling milk. Egg proteins set when heated, so adding them to very hot milk while stirring constantly keeps the custard smooth rather than letting it scramble into lumps.

“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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