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Dessert

Sherry Cream

A chilled dessert of whipped cream, sherry, lemon, sugar, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Sherry Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA very slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks.

  2. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until light.

  3. Gently fold the egg whites into the whipped cream.

  4. Add the sherry wine and lemon juice and rind, mixing until combined.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses with the froth of the cream on top.

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

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 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).

Lemon and sugar 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

Rich cream
Whipped into soft peaks to give the dessert its light, airy body.
Egg whites
Beaten until light, they add volume and a foamy lightness when folded into the cream.
Sherry wine
Flavors the cream with its mellow, nutty sweetness and aroma.
Lemon juice and rind
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma that balances the sweetness of the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the lemon and sherry.

The step that matters

Gently fold the egg whites into the whipped cream. Egg whites hold air only when beaten to the right stage. Folding gently keeps that trapped air in, so the cream stays light instead of deflating into a dense, runny mixture.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sherry, wine, sugar, 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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