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Dessert

Italian Cream

A chilled lemon and brandy custard set with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 ↓

Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Rub the rind of a lemon on a lump of sugar and scrape it into a deep dish.

  2. Add ½ cup of brandy, 2½ ounces of sifted sugar, the juice of a lemon, and 1 pint of double cream.

  3. Beat the mixture well with a clean whisk.

Add the isinglass

  1. Boil 1 ounce of isinglass in ½ cup of water until dissolved.

  2. Strain the dissolved isinglass into the other ingredients and beat for some time.

Set and serve

  1. Fill a mold with the mixture and refrigerate until cold and set.

  2. Turn out onto a dish to serve.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + brandytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,351 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Double cream
Forms the rich body of the dessert and carries its texture.
Isinglass
Gelatinous setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when turned out.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the acidity of the lemon and brandy.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the cream.
Lemon
Adds acidity and fragrant citrus oils from the rind and juice.

The step that matters

Strain the dissolved isinglass into the other ingredients and beat for some time.. Isinglass must be fully dissolved and well mixed into the cream while still warm, or it can set in lumps and leave the dessert unevenly firm.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, 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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