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Dessert

Whim Wham

A layered dessert of cream, wine, lemon peel, biscuits, currant jelly, citron, and candied orange peel.

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

Whim Wham

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the froth

  1. Sweeten the cream.

  2. Mix in the white wine and grated lemon peel.

  3. Whisk until frothy and drain through a sieve.

Layer the dish

  1. Layer some froth in a deep glass dish.

  2. Cut Naples biscuits thinly and layer them over the froth.

  3. Add a layer of red currant jelly, then more froth, followed by another layer of biscuits and jelly.

  4. Finish with the remaining froth and pour the rest of the cream into the dish.

Garnish

  1. Garnish with citron and candied orange-peel straws.

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. Red currant + orangetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Biscuit + red curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together30 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Lemon + red curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together309 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whisked into a light froth that forms the airy, layered body of the dish.
White wine
Adds acidity and a bright flavour that cuts the richness of the cream.
Lemon peel
Adds aromatic citrus oil that scents the cream.
Naples biscuits
Soak up liquid from the froth and soften, giving the layers a tender texture.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and tartness, and a fruity layer between the cream and biscuits.

The step that matters

Whisk until frothy and drain through a sieve. The froth must be light but stable enough to hold its layers. Draining removes excess liquid so the layers stay distinct rather than running together.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, white wine, lemon, biscuit, orange):

  1. Limefits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, white wine, lemon, biscuit, orange. 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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