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Dessert

Russian Cream

A custard dessert made with eggs, milk, gelatin, sugar, and flavored with wine or vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Russian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Pour the cold milk over the gelatine.

  2. Let it sit in a warm place to dissolve.

  3. Stir in the beaten yolks of the eggs with the sugar.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Stir until almost cold.

Finish and set

  1. Fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  2. Fold in the flavoring.

  3. Mould the mixture.

  4. Let it cool slowly.

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Milk + winetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (fenugreek, curry).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + winetop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, beaten stiff and folded in, lighten the cream.
Gelatine
Sets the cream into a firm, sliceable shape as it cools.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs and gelatine set into a cream.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps balance the richness of the eggs.
Wine or vanilla
Adds aroma and flavour to the finished cream.

The step that matters

Stir until almost cold. Gelatine begins to set as the mixture cools, so folding in the stiffly beaten whites must happen while it is still fluid but cool enough not to deflate them. Stirring during cooling keeps the set even and prevents lumps.

“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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