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Dessert

Whipped Cbeam, for Putting on Trifles, Serving in Glasses, &C.

A light, frothy cream made with sugar, lemon rind, sherry, and egg white, used as a topping for trifles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Whipped Cbeam, for Putting on Trifles, Serving in Glasses, &C.

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pound the sugar with the lemon rind in a mortar until fine.

  2. Beat the egg white until stiff.

Whip and drain

  1. In a large bowl, combine the cream, sugar, wine, and beaten egg white.

  2. Whip the mixture to a froth, removing the froth with a skimmer as it rises.

  3. Drain the froth on a sieve in a cool place.

  4. For best results, make this the 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.

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. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Cream + sherrytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,038 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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
Whips into a foam that holds air, forming the light body of the dish.
Egg white
Its proteins trap air when beaten, adding stiffness and lift to the froth.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the whipped foam.
Sherry or sweet white wine
Adds liquid and a sweet, aromatic flavour to the cream.

The step that matters

Removing the froth as it rises. Whipping pushes foam up quickly, and if it is not skimmed off as it forms it can collapse back into the liquid, leaving a flat, watery result.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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