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Dessert

Cherry Bisque

A chilled cherry-flavored custard dessert made with flour, sugar, eggs, milk, rum, cherries, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Cherry Bisque

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix flour and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Break eggs into the mixture and stir until creamy.

  3. Add a pinch of salt.

  4. Heat the milk in a double boiler.

  5. Combine a little milk with the flour, sugar, and egg mixture, then add to the milk in the double boiler.

  6. Cook until thick, then strain and cool.

Flavor and freeze

  1. Flavor with rum, add chopped cherries and their juice, then mix in the cream.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

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. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  3. Sugar + rumtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,908 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Thicken the custard as they cook and give the bisque a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Helps thicken the base so it holds together and does not run thin.
Cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture that stays soft when frozen.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and lowers the freezing point, keeping the frozen texture softer.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.

The step that matters

Cook until thick, then strain and cool. Eggs thicken only as they heat, and overheating can scramble them into lumps. Cook gently, stirring, until the custard coats a spoon, then strain out any bits before cooling.

“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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