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Caramel 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 ↓

Caramel Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan and whisk in the eggs and flavoring.

  2. Stir in 1 cup of granulated sugar and cook until it thickens like custard.

  3. Keep the custard warm while making the caramel.

Make the caramel and combine

  1. Dissolve 1 cup of sugar in another pan over medium heat until it becomes liquid.

  2. Stir the caramel into the warm custard quickly.

Strain and freeze

  1. If the mixture is lumpy, strain it.

  2. Combine the custard with 1 quart of cream, add vanilla flavoring, and freeze.

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
Proteins set as the custard cooks, thickening the base and giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that the eggs thicken.
Cream
Adds fat, making the finished ice cream rich and smooth.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the base, and when caramelized adds deep toffee flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the caramel into the warm custard. Caramel is very hot and hardens into brittle lumps when it meets cold liquid. Keeping the custard warm and stirring quickly spreads the caramel evenly before it sets, so the mixture stays smooth.

“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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