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Dessert

Stone Cream of Tous Les Mois

A sweet cream made with milk, sugar, preserve, and flavored with cloves and almond, topped with jam.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Isabella Beeton · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,605 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Stone Cream of Tous Les Mois

5 persons

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the preserve at the bottom of a glass dish.

  2. Put the milk into a lined saucepan with the sugar and bring to a boil.

  3. Mix the tous les mois with a very little cold milk to make a smooth batter.

Make the cream

  1. Stir the batter briskly into the boiling milk, add the flavouring, and simmer for 2 minutes.

Serve

  1. While still warm but before it solidifies, pour the cream over the jam and garnish with strips of red-currant jelly or preserved fruit.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

156Calories
8 gProtein
8 gFat
13 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 2 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Isabella Beeton. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. See the original page.

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. Clove + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,605 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Milk + clovetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,165 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the body of the cream and carries the flavouring.
Tous les mois
Starch that thickens the hot milk into a smooth, set cream.
Essence of cloves
Adds a warm, spiced aroma to the cream.
Almond-flavouring
Adds a sweet, nutty aroma to the cream.

The step that matters

Stirring the batter into the boiling milk. Starch granules must be dispersed quickly and stirred while the milk boils. Adding the batter slowly or without stirring lets it clump into lumps instead of thickening evenly into a smooth cream.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, almond):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, almond. 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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