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Dessert

Swiss Cream, or Trifle

A layered dessert of sweetened cream, lemon, cinnamon, flour, macaroons, and candied citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Swiss Cream, or Trifle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Flavor the cream with lemon rind and cinnamon.

  2. Take ½ cup of cream and mix it smoothly with the flour to form a thin batter.

  3. Sweeten the remaining cream with sugar.

  4. Heat the sweetened cream in a saucepan over medium heat until it boils.

  5. Stir in the flour mixture.

  6. Simmer for 4-5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  7. Once cooled, mix in the strained juice of two fresh lemons.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a glass dish with macaroons.

  2. Pour in part of the cream.

  3. Layer the remaining macaroons on top.

  4. Add the rest of the cream.

  5. Garnish with sliced candied citron.

  6. Prepare this dish a day in advance for best results.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Rich cream
Provides the fat and body that make the custard rich and smooth.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps soften the set texture of the cream.
Flour
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving it a spoonable body.
Macaroons
Soak up the cream and give the trifle its soft, layered structure.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet, rich cream.

The step that matters

Simmer the flour mixture while stirring constantly. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated with liquid and stirred, so the cream thickens evenly. Stopping or leaving it unattended can scorch the bottom or leave lumps.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, cinnamon, flour. 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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