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 ↓
To Preserve Cream Sweet
Ingredients
Directions
Make the sugar solution
Dissolve the sugar in a small amount of water.
Boil the sugar solution in a small pot.
Combine and cool
Immediately add the new cream to the hot sugar solution, mixing well.
Let the mixture cool gradually.
Bottle and store
Pour it into a bottle and cork it tightly.
Store in a cool place for weeks.
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.
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- White sugar
- Provides sweetness and dissolves into the liquid to form the base syrup.
- Cream
- Adds fat for richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
The step that matters
Adding the cream to the hot sugar solution. Cream is added while the syrup is still hot and must be mixed well. Fat and proteins in cream can separate or curdle when they meet hot sugar unevenly, so thorough mixing helps keep the mixture smooth and uniform.
“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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