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Dessert

Society Dessert

A gelatin dessert made with sherry, whipped cream, boiled rice, figs, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and fig work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Society Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatin

  1. Soak and dissolve the gelatine.

  2. Add the sherry wine to the dissolved gelatine.

Combine and set

  1. Fold in the whipped cream, boiled rice, chopped figs, and powdered sugar.

  2. Mix until it begins to thicken.

  3. Pour the mixture into molds.

  4. 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. Sherry + figtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Rice + figtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Wine + figtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together195 recipes

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

  5. Sherry + ricetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together572 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable dessert structure.
Heavy cream
Whipped into air bubbles that give the dessert a light, creamy texture.
Chopped figs
Add body, natural sweetness and chewy texture to the dessert.
Sherry wine
Adds a fortified, aromatic flavour to the dessert.

The step that matters

Mix until it begins to thicken.. Folding the whipped cream in before the gelatine has partly set can deflate the foam and let the figs sink. Stopping at the point of slight thickening keeps the mixture airy and evenly distributed before it sets in the molds.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Figthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, wine, cream, rice, sugar. 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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