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Dessert

Imperial Cream

A lemon and brandy cream dessert made with cream, milk, sugar, and optional orange‑flower water.

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

Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Imperial Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Squeeze and strain the juice of the lemons and grate the rind of two lemons.

  2. Mix the juice and rind with the brandy and sweeten with pounded loaf sugar.

Combine and serve

  1. Heat the cream until hot and sweeten it as well.

  2. Pour the mixture through a teapot, holding it high to create a stream.

  3. When cold, garnish with lemon peel.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

  5. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lemons
Provide acidity and aroma from the juice and rind.
Brandy
Adds flavour and aroma to the lemon mixture.
Cream
Gives the dish richness and a smooth, creamy body.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the lemon mixture and the cream.

The step that matters

Pouring the mixture through a teapot from a height. Pouring from a height creates a thin stream that mixes air into the liquid and helps the cream blend evenly with the lemon mixture. The record does not state how the mixture should look or behave at the end, so the cook should judge by the result.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, brandy, sugar, cream, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, brandy, sugar, cream, milk. 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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