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Dessert

Honeycomb Cream

A lemon and wine custard thickened with cream and sugar, set overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Honeycomb Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Grate the lemons and squeeze their juice into a dish.

  2. Add the sifted sugar and white wine, mixing well.

Make the cream

  1. Heat the cream until scalding hot but not boiling.

  2. Pour the hot cream from a height into the lemon mixture.

  3. Let it sit overnight before serving.

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. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. White wine + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Lemon juice
Provides acidity that sharpens flavour and helps the cream thicken and set.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharpness of the lemon juice.
Cream
Supplies fat and body, giving the dish its rich, smooth texture.
White wine
Adds liquid and aromatic acidity to the lemon mixture.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot cream from a height. Pouring from a height lets the cream cool slightly and aerate as it falls, while the acid in the lemon mixture reacts with the hot cream. Stirring carelessly or pouring in one quick stream can cause curdling or an uneven, grainy set.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, white wine, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, white wine, cream. 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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