Skip to main content
Dessert

Ginger Cream

A chilled dessert made with gelatin, whipped cream, powdered sugar, egg whites, and crystallized ginger.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Ginger Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until soft.

  2. Add boiling water and stir until dissolved.

  3. Let the gelatine mixture cool until it thickens.

  4. Beat the gelatine until light.

Make the cream

  1. Combine whipped cream in a bowl set in ice water.

  2. Sift powdered sugar into the bowl.

  3. Gently mix in the gelatine.

  4. Fold in the chopped ginger mixed with a little powdered sugar.

Mould and serve

  1. Dip an ice cream brick in cold water.

  2. Drain the ice cream brick.

  3. Fill the brick with the cream mixture.

  4. Let the filled brick stand until thickened.

  5. Cut into slices when serving.

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

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

  2. Ginger + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ginger and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 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 cream so it holds its shape when moulded and sliced.
Whipped cream
Provides the light, rich body and fat that give the dessert its creamy texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cream and dissolves easily into it without graininess.
Crystallized ginger
Adds chewy pieces of sweet, spicy flavour throughout the cream.

The step that matters

Let the gelatine cool until it thickens. Gelatine that is still hot or too runny will not set the cream firmly, and if it is folded in too warm it can melt the whipped cream and deflate it. It should be cool and syrupy before mixing.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, 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.

More ginger cream recipes

Ice Cream 3 See all 55 →

You might also like

Ginger CookiesGinger Cookies213 recipesGinger CakeGinger Cake93 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesSoft Ginger CakeSoft Ginger Cake56 recipes