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Dessert

Lemon and Orange Cream

A chilled cream made with lemon or orange rind, sugar, water, milk, and essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Lemon and Orange Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sugar

  1. Grate the rind of the lemon or orange onto the loaf sugar.

  2. Pound the sugar well and melt it in 2 tablespoons of warm water.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then place it on ice.

Finish and serve

  1. Whisk in a few drops of essence with 1 quart of prepared milk.

  2. Serve once well combined and 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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Milk + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and, when pounded with the rind, draws out its aromatic oils.
Lemon or orange rind
Adds citrus aroma and flavour to the cream.
Prepared milk
Forms the body of the cream, providing richness and volume.

The step that matters

Melting the sugar and cooling it on ice. The sugar must fully dissolve in the warm water so no grains remain gritty in the finished cream. Cooling it fully before adding the milk keeps the mixture from warming the dairy and helps it stay chilled and smooth.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Orangethe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

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