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Dessert

Blackberry Cream

A chilled dessert made from mashed blackberries, sugar, cream, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Blackberry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Gently mash the blackberries and place them in a fine sieve to drain.

  2. Sprinkle the blackberries with sugar to help the juice drain more freely.

  3. Whip the cream until soft peaks form and mix it with the blackberry juice.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 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

Blackberries
Supply the juice, flavor and color that give the cream its fruit base.
Cream
Adds richness and body, and whipping traps air for a light, soft texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps draw more juice out of the blackberries.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until soft peaks form. Stop at soft peaks. Overwhipping cream forces the fat particles to clump, leading to a grainy texture and eventually butter.

“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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