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 ↓
Solid Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Take ½ pint of double cream that has stood for 24 hours before being skimmed.
Sweeten the cream with 1 ounce of sugar and add flavoring to taste.
Whisk the cream in a cool place until it begins to thicken, then stop immediately to prevent curdling.
The cream will double in volume.
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Double cream
- Provides the fat that traps air when whisked, forming the thick, whipped structure.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cream and adds a little body to the whipped texture.
The step that matters
Stop whisking as soon as the cream begins to thicken. Over-whisking pushes the fat globules together until they clump and separate into butter and liquid, so curdling happens quickly once the cream is nearly whipped.
“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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