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Dessert

Excellent Cream

A chilled fruit custard made with lemon, apricots, cream, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 852 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Excellent Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. In a serving dish, combine lemon juice, grated lemon peel, and small pieces of apricots.

Make the cream

  1. Dissolve isinglass in a little milk and add it to 1 pint of cream.

  2. Boil the cream mixture briefly, then stir until nearly cold.

  3. Pour the cream over the fruit mixture.

Set and serve

  1. Once cold, garnish with whole almonds.

  2. For best results, prepare the day before serving.

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. Apricot + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together852 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Apricot + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together826 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Sets the cream as it cools, giving the custard a firm, sliceable body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, soft texture to the custard.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the fruit and cream.
Apricots
Provide the main fruit flavour and a sweet, tender base layer.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream until nearly cold before pouring. Isinglass must be fully dissolved by the brief boil, and it starts to set as the cream cools. Stirring until nearly cold keeps the gelling agent evenly distributed so the custard sets smooth and uniform rather than in lumps or patches.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, cream, milk, 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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