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Dessert

Solid Cream

Solid Cream is a chilled dessert made with sugar, cream, brandy, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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

Combine

  1. Strain the lemon juice over the sugar.

  2. Add the brandy and stir in the cream.

Thicken and serve

  1. Pour the mixture from one pitcher to another until it thickens, or whisk until the desired consistency is obtained.

  2. Serve in jelly glasses.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Cream + brandytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Brandy + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Sugar and lemon 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

Cream
Forms the body of the dish and provides richness and a smooth, thick texture.
Pounded sugar
Sweetens the dish and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavour that cuts through the richness of the cream.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warm flavour to the cream.

The step that matters

Thickening the cream. Cream thickens as air and agitation help its fat globules cling together. Stop when the desired consistency is reached, because overbeating can make the cream grainy or cause it to separate into butter and liquid.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, brandy. 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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