Name: Stone Cream of Tous Les Mois
Ingredients: ½ lb. of preserve; 1 pint of milk; 2 oz. of lump sugar; 1 heaped tablespoon of tous les mois; 3 drops of essence of cloves; 3 drops of almond flavoring

Why it works: Clove and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,605 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Stone Cream of Tous Les Mois

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Place the preserve at the bottom of a glass dish.

Make the cream

In a lined saucepan, combine the milk and sugar and bring to a boil.
Mix the tous les mois with a little cold milk to form a smooth batter.
Stir the batter into the boiling milk, add the flavorings, and simmer for 2 minutes.

Serve

When slightly cool but not solid, pour the cream over the jam.
Decorate with strips of red-currant jelly or preserved fruit.

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.

Clove + almondtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,605 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,800 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together15,679 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Milk + clovetop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,165 recipes

Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

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

Preserve: Forms the sweet fruit base beneath the cream.
Milk: Serves as the liquid base that becomes the cream.
Tous les mois: Starch that thickens the hot milk into a set cream.
Lump sugar: Adds sweetness to the cream.

The step that matters

Stir the starch batter into the boiling milk. Starch must be fully dispersed in cold milk first; stirred into boiling milk it thickens evenly and forms a smooth cream instead of lumps.

Swap the clove

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

Cinnamonfits better
Nutmegfits better
Gingerfits about as well
Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, almond. 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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Almond Sponge Cake26 recipes

Almond Custard22 recipes

Almond Wafers22 recipes

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Stone Cream of Tous Les Mois