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Dessert

Cream Mold

A chilled dessert made from milk, sugar, ground rice, vanilla, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Cream Mold

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan until boiling.

  2. Add the sugar and ground rice mixed with a little cold milk.

  3. Flavor with vanilla and stir until thickened.

Mold and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into cups or molds that have been wet with cold water.

  2. Allow to set, then turn out onto a large plate or into small dishes.

  3. Top each mold with whipped cream and a bit of jelly or serve with fruit sauce.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Milk + ricetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,374 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Milk
Forms the body of the custard and carries the sweetness and flavor.
Ground rice
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the mold its set structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the flavor.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a light, soft topping that contrasts with the firm mold.

The step that matters

Stir until thickened. Ground rice starch only thickens fully when the mixture is kept stirred and cooked near boiling; under-cooked starch leaves the mold too loose to hold its shape when turned out.

“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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