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Dessert

Tarragon Creams

A poached cream made with cream, eggs, tarragon, and seasonings, served with hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Tarragon and white pepper work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 139 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Tarragon Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. In a bowl, beat together the cream, egg white, egg yolks, chopped tarragon, white pepper, and coarse sea salt until well combined.

  2. Pour the mixture into prepared molds that contain chopped tarragon and truffles.

Poach and serve

  1. Place the molds in a stewpan filled with boiling water, ensuring the water reaches three-quarters of the height of the molds.

  2. Allow the water to boil, then poach the creams for about 20 minutes at the side of the fire until set.

  3. Carefully turn out the creams onto a warm dish and serve with hollandaise sauce around them.

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. Tarragon + white peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together139 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Egg + truffletop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,604 recipes

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

  3. Cream + tarragontop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together574 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  4. Egg + white peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  5. Tarragon + eggtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides the rich, smooth body of the set custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken and set the cream into a firm, sliceable custard when heated gently.
Egg white
Adds structure so the custard holds its shape when turned out.
Chopped tarragon
Adds its aromatic, slightly anise-like flavour to the custard.

The step that matters

Poaching at a gentle heat. Egg custards turn grainy, weepy and rubbery if they boil or cook too fast. Keeping the water at the side of the fire, with the molds only partly submerged, lets the eggs set gently and evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, tarragon, egg, truffle):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, tarragon, egg, truffle. 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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