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Dessert

Stone Cream

Stone Cream is a lemon and apricot custard dessert made with cream, lemon juice, and preserved fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stone Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Combine lemon juice, grated lemon peel, and preserved apricots or sweetmeat in a glass or china dish.

  2. Dissolve isinglass in a little water by boiling it.

Make the cream

  1. Add the dissolved isinglass to the cream and sweeten with pounded loaf sugar.

  2. Boil the mixture while stirring continuously.

  3. Pour the mixture into a jug and stir occasionally until it is warm.

Assemble

  1. Pour the cream over the sweetmeat in a circular motion.

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. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  3. Apricot + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Apricot + creamtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

Isinglass
Gelatine-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape.
Cream
Provides the rich body and fat that give the dessert its smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the cream.
Preserved apricots or sweetmeat
Adds fruity sweetness and flavour beneath the cream layer.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream to taste.

The step that matters

Boil the mixture while stirring continuously. Cream scorches and can catch on the base of the pan when heated without constant stirring. Keeping it moving spreads the heat evenly and prevents the isinglass-set texture from being spoiled by burnt bits.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, cream, sugar. 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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