Skip to main content
Dessert

Raspberry Creams

Small raspberry jam balls coated in a thin layer of melted French cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Raspberry Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the centres

  1. Stir enough confectioners' sugar into the raspberry jam to form a thick paste.

  2. Roll the mixture into small balls between your hands.

Coat and set

  1. Melt the French Cream in a teacup set in a basin of boiling water, stirring until smooth.

  2. Add cochineal coloring or raspberry juice to the melted cream to achieve a pale pink color, being careful not to add too much.

  3. Dip the balls into the melted cream, giving them two coats.

  4. Set aside to harden, stirring the melted cream occasionally to prevent it from turning back to syrup.

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. Raspberry + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,332 recipes

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

  3. Raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 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

Raspberry jam
Provides the flavour and fruity core that the sugar paste is built around.
Confectioners' sugar
Stiffens the jam into a paste that holds its shape when rolled into balls.
French cream
Forms the outer coating that sets hard around each ball as it cools.

The step that matters

Keeping the melted cream from turning back to syrup. Melted cream that is left to stand can separate and revert to a syrupy state instead of setting firm. Stirring it occasionally while the coated balls harden keeps it smooth and helps the coating set properly.

Swap the raspberry

The recipe marks raspberry as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberrythe original
  4. Raisinfits about as well

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

You might also like

Raspberry JamRaspberry Jam150 recipesRaspberry CreamRaspberry Cream82 recipesRaspberry IceRaspberry Ice29 recipesRaspberry Ice CreamRaspberry Ice Cream24 recipes