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Dessert

Stone Cream

Stone Cream is a chilled dessert made with fruit preserves, lemon juice, cream, isinglass, wine, sugar, and garnished with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry and almond work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stone Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a glass dish, layer the preserve and pour lemon juice on top.

  2. Boil the cream with the dissolved isinglass in a little warm milk.

  3. Add wine and loaf sugar to the cream mixture.

Set and decorate

  1. Pour the warm cream over the preserves, stirring gently.

  2. Refrigerate overnight for best results.

  3. Once cold, slice the blanched almonds lengthwise and decorate the top.

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. Strawberry + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Strawberry + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

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

  5. Strawberry + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Gelatine-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when chilled.
Cream
Forms the rich, creamy body of the dessert once it is chilled and set.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet preserve and balances the richness of the cream.
Preserve
Provides the fruity base layer and sweetness beneath the cream.

The step that matters

Pour the warm cream over the preserves, stirring gently.. The cream must be warm enough to stay fluid but not so hot that it mixes into or cloudily disturbs the fruit layer. Gentle stirring keeps the layers distinct as the isinglass sets the cream during chilling.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against strawberry, cream, milk, wine, 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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