Skip to main content
Dessert

Tea Cream

A chilled dessert made from tea, milk, cream, gelatin, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Tea Cream

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 ↓

Tea Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse and strain

  1. Bring the milk to a boil, then pour it over the tea and let it infuse for 20 minutes.

  2. Strain the tea mixture and add half of the cream.

Finish and set

  1. Dissolve the gelatine in a little boiling water, strain it into the cream, and sweeten to taste.

  2. Whip the remaining cream until stiff, then stir it into the tea mixture when it is sufficiently cool.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold rinsed with cold water and let it set for about 1 hour.

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

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

  2. Tea + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Tea + creamtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together463 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid cream into a firm, sliceable body that holds its shape.
Tea
Gives the cream its main flavour and aroma.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that carries the tea flavour and adds body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture; whipped portion adds lightness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the tea's bitterness.

The step that matters

Stir in the whipped cream only when the mixture is cool. Whipped cream is a foam of trapped air held by fat. Folding it into a warm mixture melts the fat and collapses the foam, so the cream loses its lightness. Waiting until the mixture is cool keeps the air intact and lets the cream set evenly with the gelatine.

“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.

More tea cream recipes

Ice Cream 4 See all 31 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes