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Dessert

Swiss Cream

A lemon cream poured over macaroons, prepared by boiling cream with lemon rind and mixing with lemon juice and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Swiss Cream

Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Swiss Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Boil the cream with the grated lemon rind for 10 minutes.

  2. Pour the hot cream onto the lemon juice mixed with flour, stirring well.

Serve

  1. Place macaroons in a dish and strain the cream over them.

  2. Prepare this a day before serving.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Lemon and sugar 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

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body to the dessert.
White sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright citrus flavour that cuts through the richness.
Flour
Thickens the cream as the starch cooks in the hot liquid.
Grated lemon rind
Adds aromatic lemon oils that give the cream its fragrance.
Macaroons
Form a soft base that soaks up the cream and adds texture.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot cream onto the lemon juice and flour. Stirring well while pouring disperses the flour evenly in the liquid. If the flour clumps, the starch cannot thicken the cream smoothly, leaving lumps in the finished dessert.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, flour. 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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