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Dessert

Citron Cream

A dessert made by cutting ripe citron melons, coating with powdered sugar, draining syrup, adding cream, and freezing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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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 ↓

Citron Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the citron

  1. Cut ripe citron melons and remove the seeds.

  2. Slice the best part into small pieces and place them in a bowl.

  3. Cover the pieces with powdered sugar and let them stand for several hours.

Finish and freeze

  1. Drain off the syrup that forms.

  2. Add enough cream to the syrup to create a strong flavor and freeze it.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Melon + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together796 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Melon + creamtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together71 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

Citron melons
Provide the fruit flavor and body of the dessert.
Powdered sugar
Draws juice out of the fruit to form a syrup and adds sweetness.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, softening the flavor and giving a creamy texture when frozen.

The step that matters

Letting the citron stand in sugar. Sugar must have enough hours to draw liquid out of the fruit through osmosis, forming the syrup that gives the dessert its flavor. Skipping or shortening this time leaves too little syrup to carry the flavor.

Swap the melon

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

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

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

More citron cream recipes

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