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Dessert

Rhenish Cream

A gelatin dessert made with sugar, lemon and Seville orange zest, eggs, Marsala wine, and boiling water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Rhenish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the gelatine and sugar in boiling water.

  2. Add the grated rind of the lemon and half a Seville orange, along with the juice of both.

  3. Beat the yolks of the eggs and mix them with the Marsala wine.

  4. Stir the mixture over low heat until nearly boiling.

  5. Strain the mixture, pour it into a damp mold, and cool.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Orange + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,046 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable cream as it cools.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the mixture and add richness and body.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the acidity of the citrus.
Marsala wine
Adds aromatic depth and a fortified wine flavour.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture over low heat until nearly boiling. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated, so gentle heat thickens the custard smoothly. Stop just short of boiling to keep the texture silky.

“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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