Skip to main content
Dessert

Swiss Cream

A custard-like dessert made with lemon, sugar, cream, and flour, garnished with candied orange peel and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Swiss Cream

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 ↓

Swiss Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Boil the grated peel of the lemon and sugar in the cream.

  2. Squeeze the lemon juice into a bowl with the flour and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the boiling cream to the flour mixture, stirring constantly.

  4. Heat the mixture over the fire until thickened.

Serve

  1. Pour into a basin and let it cool slightly.

  2. Transfer to a glass or china dish and garnish with candied orange peel and citron.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Cream
Forms the rich body of the custard and carries the lemon flavour.
Flour
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the mixture a smooth, set texture.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the sharpness of the lemon.
Lemon
Adds acidity and aroma from its juice and grated peel.

The step that matters

Gradually add the boiling cream to the flour mixture, stirring constantly.. Adding hot cream slowly while stirring keeps the flour evenly dispersed, so lumps do not form and the mixture thickens smoothly.

Swap the orange

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

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

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

More swiss cream recipes

Trifle 17 See all 36 →

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes