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Dessert

Italian Cream

A custard made from milk, eggs, sugar, and corn starch, folded with a meringue and served chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, eggs, sugar, and corn starch.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens like custard.

Add the meringue

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then gradually add a little sugar and vanilla extract.

  2. Fold the meringue into the custard mixture gently.

Serve

  1. Serve chilled.

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

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

  3. Corn + vanillatop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,943 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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
Provides the liquid base and moisture that the custard thickens.
Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard as they heat, and whites whip into the meringue for lightness.
Corn starch
Swells when heated with liquid, thickening the custard to a spoonable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites in the meringue.

The step that matters

Cook the custard over medium heat while stirring constantly. Corn starch needs to reach thickening heat to swell and set the custard. Constant stirring keeps the mixture from scorching on the bottom or forming lumps, which would leave the texture grainy.

“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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