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Dessert

Bavarian Cream with Candied Fruit

A chilled dessert of gelatinized cream flavored with ginger or orange, topped with candied fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Ginger and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,833 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Bavarian Cream with Candied Fruit

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Chop and press the preserved ginger through a sieve, or use the orange juice.

  2. Soak the gelatine in cold water for 2 hours.

Make the custard

  1. Boil sugar and water rapidly for 10 minutes, then add ginger or orange juice and gelatine.

  2. If using oranges, add the grated rind to the gelatine.

  3. Stir until the mixture begins to thicken, then gently fold in the beaten cream.

Set and serve

  1. Add candied ginger or oranges before pouring into a mold.

  2. Once firm, turn the mold out onto a glass dish and decorate with lady fingers and candied fruit.

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. Ginger + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,833 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

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

  3. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Orange + creamtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,170 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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

Gelatine
Sets the cream into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when beaten and folded in.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps form the syrup base.
Preserved ginger
Adds aroma and a sharp, spicy flavour to the cream.

The step that matters

Fold in the cream as the mixture thickens. If the gelatine mixture is too cold and set, the cream will not blend evenly and lumps may form; if too warm, the cream will deflate and the dessert will not hold its airy texture.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Lemonfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ginger, sugar, 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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