Why it works: Cream and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,887 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓
Possets
Ingredients
Directions
Mix a little of the hot cream or milk with your wine to prevent curdling.
Remove the cream from the heat before mixing it with the wine.
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.
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Cream + winetop 19% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,887 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cream or milk
- Provides fat and richness that give the posset its smooth, creamy body.
- Wine
- Its acidity helps the cream thicken and sets the posset with a tart flavour.
The step that matters
Mixing the wine into the hot cream. Adding wine to very hot dairy can cause it to curdle. Warming the wine by mixing in a little hot cream first, and taking the cream off the heat before combining, keeps the mixture smooth.
“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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