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Dessert

Clotted Cream

A thickened cream made with mace, milk, rose‑water, egg yolks, and cream, set for 24 hours and served with fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and rose work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 498 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Clotted Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Infuse and strain

  1. String the mace on a thread and add it to the new milk and rose-water.

  2. Simmer for a few minutes, then strain the mixture.

Combine and heat

  1. Gradually stir the strained mixture into the beaten egg yolks.

  2. Combine this with the quart of cream and heat over low heat, stirring until hot but not boiling.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a deep dish and let it stand for 24 hours.

  2. Serve in a cream dish with fruits.

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. Mace + rosetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together498 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Mace + milktop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

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

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

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Mace + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as it heats, giving a rich, smooth, spoonable texture.
Cream
Supplies fat that gives the dish its rich body and mouthfeel.
New milk
Provides liquid that carries the mace and rose-water flavours into the custard.
Mace
Adds warm, spiced aroma as it steeps in the milk.
Rose-water
Adds a floral aroma to the infused milk.

The step that matters

Heat the cream mixture gently until hot but not boiling. Egg yolks thicken with heat but can curdle or turn grainy if overheated. Low heat and stirring keep the custard smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Macethe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, rose, 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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