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Dessert

Italian Cream

A chilled lemon-flavored thick cream dessert made with lemon juice, rind, cream, sugar, isinglass, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Combine the lemon juice and grated rind with the thick cream in a bowl.

  2. Sweeten to taste and let it stand for 30 minutes.

  3. Whisk the mixture until it thickens.

Set and serve

  1. Dissolve the isinglass in the water by boiling it, then strain it through a fine sieve.

  2. Add the dissolved isinglass to the cream mixture and beat together for a while.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until cold and set.

  4. Turn out the set cream onto a dish.

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

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

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

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

  3. 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

Thick cream
Provides richness and body, forming the bulk of the creamy texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet cream and gives it a citrus flavour.
Isinglass
Gelatine-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when chilled.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the sharpness of the lemon.

The step that matters

Strain the dissolved isinglass before adding it. Isinglass can leave lumps or undissolved bits if not fully dissolved, and straining through a fine sieve removes them so the cream sets smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar. 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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