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Mock Cream for Coffee

A thickened cream made with milk, butter, flour, and egg yolks, used as a coffee topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Mock Cream for Coffee

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix the butter and flour, thinning with a little hot milk.

  3. Add the mixture to the milk and beat constantly for 5 minutes while boiling.

  4. Remove from heat and continue to beat for another 5 minutes.

  5. Beat the egg yolks until very light and add them to the hot cream, mixing well.

  6. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve and beat until very light.

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 + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Milk
Forms the liquid base that thickens into the cream.
Flour
Thickens the mixture as it heats, giving body to the cream.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the cream set as it thickens.
Sweet butter
Adds fat for a smoother, richer texture.

The step that matters

Beat the egg yolks into the hot cream. Adding yolks to very hot cream can scramble them. Beating them until light and mixing well helps them blend in smoothly and thicken the cream evenly.

“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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