Name: Method of Preserving Cream
Ingredients: 12 ounces loaf sugar; 12 ounces fine and fresh cream; water

Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Method of Preserving Cream

Ingredients

12 ounces loaf sugar
12 ounces fine and fresh cream
water

Directions

Make the syrup

Dissolve the sugar in water over moderate heat or in a water bath.
Boil the mixture for about 2 minutes.

Combine and store

Add the cream and thoroughly mix over the heat.
Let it cool, then pour into a bottle and cork it tightly.
Store in a cool place for several months.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 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

Loaf sugar: Dissolves into the water to form a syrup that sweetens the cream and helps preserve it.
Fine and fresh cream: Provides the rich fat and body that make up the finished preserved cream.

“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.