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Dessert

Plum and Apple Cream

A chilled fruit custard made with apples, plums, milk, gelatine, sugar, egg whites, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Apple and plum match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Plum and Apple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Dissolve the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in hot milk with sugar.

Prepare and add the fruit

  1. Pare and core the apples.

  2. Wipe and pick the plums.

  3. Rub the fruit through a wire sieve.

  4. Stir the fruit into the mixture when nearly cold.

Whip and fold

  1. Whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  2. Fold the whisked egg whites into the cream.

  3. Whisk the cream until light and frothy.

  4. Stir in the whipped cream.

Set

  1. Pour the mixture into a mold.

  2. Refrigerate until set.

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. Apple + plumtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Milk + appletop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,104 recipes

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

  4. Milk + plumtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together406 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a soft, sliceable pudding as it cools.
Egg whites
Whisked to stiff peaks, they trap air and make the pudding light.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and richness, giving a smooth, creamy mouthfeel.
Cooking apples
Pureed into the mixture, they add body, tartness and fruit flavour.
Plums
Pureed into the mixture, they add fruit flavour, colour and some acidity.
Sugar
Sweetens the milk base and balances the tartness of the fruit.

The step that matters

Stir the fruit in when nearly cold. If the mixture is still hot, the warm fruit can thin it and deflate the whipped cream and egg whites. If it is too cold, the gelatine may begin to set unevenly, leaving lumps in the pudding.

Swap the plum

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Plumthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, apple, egg, cream. 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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