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Dessert

Swiss Cream

A sponge cake topped with a thickened cream mixture flavored with sherry and lemon, garnished with pistachios.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Swiss Cream

Why it works: Lemon and pistachio match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 431 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Swiss Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cake

  1. Cut the sponge cake into 1-inch thick slices.

  2. Place the slices in a serving dish.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine cream, milk, sherry, castor sugar, and cornflour.

  2. Heat gently while stirring until thickened.

  3. Remove from heat and add the juice and zest of the lemon.

Assemble and serve

  1. Pour the mixture over the cake slices.

  2. Sprinkle with chopped pistachios before serving.

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 + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

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

  3. Milk + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,479 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3,5-trimethylpyrazine (cocoa, roasted).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Cream + pistachiotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together634 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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, creamy texture to the sauce.
Milk
Thins the cream and adds moisture for a lighter sauce.
Cornflour
Thickens the liquid as it heats, giving the sauce its body.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves smoothly into the warm liquid.
Sherry
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Lemon
Adds acidity and bright citrus aroma to balance the richness.

The step that matters

Heat gently while stirring until thickened. Cornflour thickens through starch swelling when heated, but if the mixture boils too hard or is not stirred, it can scorch on the base or form lumps. Gentle, constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, sherry, sugar, pistachio. 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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