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Dessert

Diplomatic Cream

A chilled dessert made with gelatin, cream, sugar, egg whites, vanilla, cherry, candied fruit, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and cherry match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 890 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Diplomatic Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Whip the cream until stiff peaks form.

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, boil the cream that will not whip with enough milk to make a total of 1 pint.

  2. Once boiling, add the sugar and the soaked gelatine, stirring until dissolved.

  3. Pour the mixture over the beaten egg whites and stir well.

Set and finish

  1. When it begins to thicken, gently fold in the whipped cream.

  2. Place the pan on ice to keep it cold.

  3. When thick enough to drop from a spoon, add the candied fruits or chopped almonds.

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. Vanilla + cherrytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Vanilla + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Cherry + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together672 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

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

Gelatine
Sets the mixture as it cools, giving it a firm, sliceable body.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the dessert its light, airy structure.
Cream
Provides richness and fat, and whipped cream adds lightness to the set dessert.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the beaten egg white foam.

The step that matters

Fold in the whipped cream as the mixture begins to thicken. If the mixture is still too runny, the whipped cream will deflate and thin the dessert. If it has set too far, the cream will not blend evenly and lumps will form.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, egg, vanilla, almond. 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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