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Dessert

Sack Cream

A thickened cream dessert made with raw cream, egg yolk, white wine, and sugar, served with dry toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Sack Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Boil the raw cream in a saucepan.

  2. Add the egg yolk, white wine, and sugar.

  3. Stir over gentle heat until thickened like rich cream.

  4. Let it cool.

Serve

  1. Serve in glasses with long pieces of dry toast.

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 + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

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

  4. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. White wine + sugartop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,586 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Cream and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 42,166 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Raw cream
Provides the rich fat and body that make up the bulk of the cream.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream as its proteins set gently over heat.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that cut the richness of the cream.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine and cream.

The step that matters

Stirring over gentle heat until thickened. Egg yolk proteins set at moderate temperatures. If the heat is too high or unattended, the yolk can scramble and curdle, leaving the cream grainy instead of smooth.

“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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