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Tea Cream

A sweetened milk and cream mixture thickened with rennet and served with sweetmeats.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Tea Cream

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 ↓

Tea Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the tea milk

  1. Boil the milk and hyson tea together.

  2. Strain out the tea leaves.

Set and serve

  1. Add the cream and rennet to the milk.

  2. Sweeten to taste.

  3. Set the mixture over hot embers in a dish covered with a tin plate.

  4. When thickened, serve garnished with sweetmeats.

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

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

  2. Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Tea + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Milk
Forms the base of the cream and carries the tea flavour.
Cream
Adds richness and a smoother, fuller texture to the set cream.
Rennet
Causes the milk and cream mixture to coagulate and thicken into a set cream.
Hyson tea
Infuses the milk with its flavour and aroma.

The step that matters

Set the mixture over hot embers. Rennet works best at gentle, steady warmth; too much heat can overcook or break the delicate set, while too little leaves it runny. Covering the dish keeps heat and moisture in so the cream thickens evenly.

“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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