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Dessert

Oriental Cream

A gelatin dessert made with lemon, custard, and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Oriental Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in 1 pint of water.

  2. Add the lemon juice and sugar, and mix until thoroughly dissolved.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold or large glass dish.

Add the custard and topping

  1. In a saucepan, make a boiled custard by heating the milk and whisking in the egg yolks until thickened.

  2. Let the custard cool, then pour it over the jelly.

  3. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and spread them over the top.

  4. Heat a torch and hold it over the dessert to brown the top slightly.

  5. Serve cold.

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. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable jelly layer.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a smooth boiled custard as they cook.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light, airy topping over the dessert.
Milk
Forms the base of the custard, giving it richness and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the jelly layer and balances the tartness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Let the custard cool before pouring it over the jelly. Hot custard can melt or disturb the set gelatine layer and cause the layers to blend. Cooling it first keeps the two layers distinct and the jelly firm.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg. 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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