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Dessert

To Make Clotted Cream

Clotted cream is made by heating cream, curdling, draining, and sweetening with fruit juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

To Make Clotted Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the curd

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until it curdles.

  2. Carefully break the curd with a silver spoon.

  3. Drain the curd on a sieve for a little while.

Serve

  1. Transfer the curd to a china soup plate.

  2. Pour good cream over the curd and add fruit juice to achieve a pink color.

  3. Sweeten to your taste and garnish with strawberry leaves.

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

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

  2. Cream + strawberrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides the rich fat that forms the thick, soft curd and the dish's body.
Rennet
An enzyme that curdles the cream, separating it into soft curd and liquid whey.
Fruit juice
Gives the clotted cream its pink colour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to taste.

The step that matters

Carefully break the curd with a silver spoon.. The curd is delicate. Breaking it roughly can press out liquid and leave the texture grainy or watery, so gentle handling keeps it soft and smooth.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberrythe original
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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