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Dessert

Stone Cream

Stone Cream is a lemon custard made with milk, cream, almonds, isinglass, and sweetmeat.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Stone Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dish

  1. Grate the rind and squeeze the juice of the lemon into a glass dish.

  2. Cover the bottom of the dish with rich sweetmeat.

Make the cream

  1. Dissolve the isinglass in the sweet milk and strain through muslin.

  2. Add the cream, new milk, and pounded almonds to the mixture.

  3. Add a little loaf sugar and let it simmer once on the fire.

  4. Pour the mixture into a dish and let it cool nearly.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a glass dish and serve the next day for tea.

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. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, tender cream as it cools.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Pounded bitter almonds
Adds a nutty, aromatic flavour to the cream.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma to the cream.

The step that matters

Strain the isinglass mixture through muslin. Isinglass must be fully dissolved before straining, or lumps and undissolved gelatin will remain and give the cream an uneven, grainy texture once it sets.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, almond, 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.

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