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Pink Filling for Cream Cakes

A pink filling made from beaten egg whites, raspberry jelly, icing sugar, and red currant jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and red currant match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 155 recipes. Both carry ethyl benzoate, which smells fruity, sweet. The science ↓

Pink Filling for Cream Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gently fold in the raspberry jelly, icing sugar, and red currant jelly.

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. Raspberry + red curranttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together155 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  2. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  3. Raspberry + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,101 recipes

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

  4. Egg + raspberrytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Sugar + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they trap air and give the filling its light, airy structure.
Raspberry jelly
Adds sweetness, fruit flavour and colour, and moisture to the whipped whites.
Red currant jelly
Adds tart fruit flavour and sweetness, and deepens the pink colour of the filling.

The step that matters

Gently fold in the jellies and sugar. Stirring hard knocks air out of the whipped egg whites, so the filling turns dense and loses volume. Folding with a light hand keeps the foam intact.

Swap the red currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Red currantthe original
  4. Blueberryfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, raspberry, 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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