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Swiss Cream

A simple custard made by boiling cream with cinnamon or lemon peel and thickening with a flour‑milk mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Swiss Cream

Why it works: Cinnamon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Swiss Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil 1 pint of cream or new milk with a little cinnamon or lemon peel.

  2. In a small bowl, rub 1 teaspoon of flour into a small quantity of milk.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the boiling cream, stirring continuously on the fire.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Cream or new milk
Forms the base of the dish and gives it its rich, creamy body.
Flour
Thickens the liquid as its starch swells with heat, giving the cream body.

The step that matters

Adding the flour mixture to the boiling cream. Flour mixed into liquid can clump if added without care. Stirring continuously while it is added to the boiling cream disperses the starch evenly, so it thickens smoothly rather than forming lumps.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits about as well
  3. Cinnamonthe original
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, flour, 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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