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Dessert

Cherry Mousse

A chilled dessert made with thick cream, sugar, cherry juice, and bitter almond extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Cherry and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 672 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cherry Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the thick cream, sugar, cherry juice, and bitter almond extract.

  2. Chill the mixture on ice.

Whip and freeze

  1. Whip the chilled mixture until stiff.

  2. Transfer to a tightly covered mold and bury it in ice and salt for 3 hours.

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. Cherry + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together672 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  3. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  5. Sugar + cherrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,598 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

Thick cream
Whipped into a stiff foam that gives the mousse its light, airy structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set mousse for a smoother texture.
Cherry juice
Supplies the main fruit flavour and liquid that is blended into the cream.

The step that matters

Whip the chilled mixture until stiff. Cold cream whips to a stable foam because the fat globules firm up and trap air. If the mixture is warm, it whips slowly and may collapse, leaving a dense mousse.

Swap the cherry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Cherrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, 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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