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Dessert

Fruit Creams, and Italian Creams

Fruit creams are chilled mixtures of cream flavored with fruit juice or jam, sometimes colored with cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Creams, and Italian Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the flavouring

  1. Mix the cream with the sweetened juice or fruit jelly/jam to flavor it.

  2. Add a few drops of prepared cochineal if desired for color.

  3. For strawberry or raspberry jelly, use ¼ cup to flavor 1 pint of cream.

  4. Crush fresh fruit and sprinkle with sugar to extract juice.

  5. Simmer peaches, pineapple, apricots, or nectarines in syrup for a few minutes, then drain.

Whip and serve

  1. Mix the cold syrup with the cream and add a little lemon juice.

  2. Whisk the mixture lightly to a froth and remove it with a skimmer.

  3. Drain the froth on a fine sieve or fill serving glasses immediately.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Cream
Whisked into a light froth that forms the body of the dessert.
Fruit juice or fruit jelly/jam
Provides the fruit flavour and sweetness that colours and flavours the cream.
Lemon juice
Adds a little acidity to brighten the sweetness of the cream.

The step that matters

Whisk the mixture lightly to a froth. Cream whips quickly once it begins to thicken, and over-whisking turns it grainy and heavy. Stop when a light froth forms, then lift it off so the lighter foam is collected.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, syrup. 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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