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Dessert

Holstein Cream

A lemon‑rice cream served over sponge cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Rice and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,374 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Holstein Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Soak the thin rind of the lemon in 1 pint of cream by the fire for 30 minutes.

  2. Slowly bring the cream to a boil.

  3. Mix 1 teaspoon of ground rice with the strained lemon juice and a little cold milk until smooth.

  4. Stir the mixture into the boiling cream.

  5. Add 2 tablespoons of sugar.

  6. Boil for 5 more minutes, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Slice a small sponge cake and place it in a glass dish.

  2. Pour the cream over the sponge cake and garnish as desired.

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. Rice + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms the rich, thick body of the dish and carries the lemon flavour.
Ground rice
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving it a smooth, set texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Sponge cake
Forms a soft base that the warm cream is poured over.

The step that matters

Stirring the ground rice into the boiling cream. Ground rice starch can clump if added without being fully smoothed in cold liquid first, and it must be stirred constantly while boiling so it thickens evenly without scorching on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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