Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓
Bavarian Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Soak half a package of gelatine in ½ cup of cold water for 2 hours.
Mash the berries with the sugar and let them stand for 1 hour.
Press the mixture through a fine sieve to remove the seeds.
Make the cream
Pour ½ cup of hot water over the soaked gelatine and stir until dissolved.
Add the strained berries to the dissolved gelatine.
Place the mixture in a basin of ice water and beat until it begins to thicken.
Gently fold in the whipped cream.
Set and serve
Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until hardened.
When serving, top with fresh berries and serve whipped cream on the side.
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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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Gelatine
- Sets the liquid berry mixture into a firm, sliceable body as it cools.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the berries and balances their natural tartness.
- Ripe berries
- Provide the main flavour, colour and fruit pulp of the dessert.
- Whipped cream
- Adds fat and air, giving the set cream a light, creamy texture.
The step that matters
Beating over ice water. Cooling the mixture while beating must stop just as it thickens. If it sets too far before the cream is folded in, the dessert becomes lumpy and the whipped cream deflates when mixed in.
“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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