Skip to main content
Dessert

Princess Cream

A gelatin-based dessert made with milk, egg yolk, sugar, vanilla or sherry, served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Princess Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Soak the gelatin and a pinch of salt in 4 tablespoons of rich milk for 30 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolk with 2 tablespoons of sugar and a tiny pinch of salt until creamy.

  3. Add 1 cup of boiling milk to the egg mixture and set it in a saucepan with boiling water.

  4. Boil and stir for 4 minutes.

  5. Add the soaked gelatin and cook, stirring, for 1 minute.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove from heat and whip in the beaten egg white until stiff.

  2. Flavor with vanilla or sherry.

  3. Pour into a glass dish and serve ice cold with cake or wafers.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

  4. Gelatin + vanillatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together924 recipes

    Shared aroma: maltol (caramel, sweet).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Gelatin
Sets the cream into a soft, sliceable body as it cools.
Egg yolk
Thickens the milk mixture and adds richness to the custard.
Egg white
Whipped to stiffness, it lightens the cream and gives it an airy texture.
Rich milk
Provides the liquid base and creamy body of the dish.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Add the soaked gelatin and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Gelatin must be fully dissolved into the hot custard and not allowed to boil hard. Stirring keeps the mixture smooth and evenly set, while overheating can weaken gelatin's setting power and leave the cream less firm.

“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.

You might also like

Vanilla Ice CreamVanilla Ice Cream108 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes