Skip to main content
Dessert

Sack-Posset

A sweet cream dessert made with cream, almonds, wine, eggs, and optional spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Sack-Posset

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Combine the cream and almonds in a pot and stamp the almonds into the cream.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil with amber and musk.

Make the posset

  1. Warm the sack in a separate basin until it is blood warm.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and whites together until well mixed.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the warm sack.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the cream over low heat until it thickens to your desired consistency.

Serve

  1. If desired, grind amber and musk with sugar and sprinkle on top 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.

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. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  4. Cream + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Pure cream
Forms the rich, creamy base that the eggs thicken into a smooth custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken the mixture as their proteins set with gentle heat, giving the posset its body.
Best almonds
Add nutty flavour and richness to the cream as it is infused.
Sack
Adds sweet wine flavour and aroma to the custard.
Sugar
Adds sweetness, balancing the wine and the rich cream.

The step that matters

Stir the eggs into the cream over low heat. Egg proteins set at moderate temperatures, so high heat can curdle the yolks and leave lumps. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the posset smooth as it thickens.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, wine, egg, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes