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Dessert

Italian Cream

A chilled custard made with cream, gelatine, sugar, cinnamon, lemon rind, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the custard

  1. Soak the gelatine in the milk for a few minutes.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the cream, lemon rind, and cinnamon; bring slowly to a boil.

  3. Strain the mixture over the beaten yolks and sugar.

  4. Return the mixture to the saucepan, add the gelatine, and stir over low heat for a few minutes.

Set and chill

  1. Remove from heat and stir until cool but not set.

  2. Pour into a decorative mold and refrigerate until set.

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. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body to the dessert.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid cream so it holds its shape when chilled.
Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and add richness and colour.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the cinnamon and lemon.

The step that matters

Stir until cool but not set. If the custard cools too much before molding, the gelatine can begin to set unevenly and form lumps or a grainy texture. Stirring keeps it smooth and evenly thickened before it goes into the mold.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, cinnamon, milk, egg. 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.

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