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Dessert

A Cream

A sweet cream made with cream, milk, almonds, bay leaves, lemon peel, orange flower water, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and 43,437 recipes mention both. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, tree nuts (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Boil the cream and milk with bay leaves, lemon peel, and beaten almonds mixed with a drop of water.

  2. Add sugar, orange-flower water, and flour rubbed down with a little cold milk.

  3. Once cold, stir in lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Serve in cups or lemonade glasses.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cream + sugartop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together43,437 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together10,632 recipes

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

  3. Almond + flourtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together8,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together19,048 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides richness and a smooth, thick body to the finished cream.
Milk
Adds liquid and body, softening the richness of the cream.
Almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and body when beaten into the boiling liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it sets into a smooth, spoonable texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the lemon and orange-flower flavours.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich cream.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be rubbed smooth with cold milk before it goes in, because dry flour added to hot liquid clumps and will not thicken evenly. Stirring it in cleanly lets the starch swell and give a smooth texture.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Figbetter flavor fit
  3. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, almond, sugar, orange, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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