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Dessert

Pink Creams

Pink Creams are small, pink, stiff confectionery made from egg white, water, sugar, flavoring, and coloring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Pink Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Break the egg white and add cold water in a bowl.

  2. Stir in confectioner's sugar until the mixture is stiff.

  3. Flavor the mixture with vanilla or rose and add a few drops of fruit coloring.

Shape and dry

  1. Form the mixture into balls and flatten them.

  2. Lay the flattened balls on paper to dry.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Sugar and vanilla 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

Egg white
Whips into a foam that gives the creams their light, airy structure.
Confectioner's sugar
Thickens the liquid into a stiff mixture that holds its shape and sweetens the creams.

The step that matters

Stir in confectioner's sugar until the mixture is stiff. Sugar must be added gradually so the mixture thickens to a stiff, shapeable consistency. Adding too little leaves it too soft to form into balls, while too much makes it dry and crumbly.

“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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