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Dessert

Italian Cream, Another Way

A sweet cream sauce made with flour, ratafia, sugar, lemon peel, eggs, orange flower water, cream, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Italian Cream, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, ratafia, sugar, lemon peel, egg yolks, whole egg, and orange flower water.

  2. Gradually blend in the cream.

  3. Heat the mixture in a saucepan over medium heat until it boils for 2 minutes.

  4. If the mixture is too thick, add a little milk.

Serve

  1. Serve over petits choux, meringue, pancakes, or apple puree.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

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

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set when heated.
Whole egg
Adds additional protein to help thicken and set the sauce when heated.
Cream
Provides fat and body, giving the sauce a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Stabilizes the sauce so it thickens and holds its texture when boiled.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until it boils for 2 minutes. Egg proteins thicken the sauce as they heat, but overheating or curdling can make it grainy. Bringing it to a boil and holding it briefly helps the starch and egg thicken fully into a smooth sauce.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, lemon, egg, cream, milk. 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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