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Another Way to Make Italian Cream

A custard made by sweetening cream with sugar, lemon rind, cinnamon, isinglass, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Another Way to Make Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Sweeten the cream with pounded sugar.

  2. Boil the cream with the lemon rind and cinnamon.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Mix the strained mixture with dissolved isinglass.

  5. While boiling hot, add it to the well-beaten egg yolks.

  6. Stir until completely cool.

Set and serve

  1. Pour into a shape or mold.

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cream
Provides richness and body, so the set custard tastes smooth and fatty.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cooled cream into a sliceable shape.
Egg yolks
Thicken the cream as they cook gently and add richness and a yellow color.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the richness of the yolks and cream.

The step that matters

Adding the hot cream to the egg yolks. Pouring boiling cream into yolks too quickly can scramble them. Adding the hot mixture gradually, while whisking, warms the yolks gently so they thicken smoothly instead of curdling.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, cinnamon, egg. 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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