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Cold Sweet Entremets

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pistachio and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 693 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Cold Sweet Entremets

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Place the fruit in a basin and pour hot syrup over it. Add maraschino, cover, and let cool.

  2. Pour off the syrup, boil it again, and add it back to the fruit.

  3. Arrange the fruit neatly in a low souffle dish or a glass compotiere.

  4. Soak gelatine in milk, then dissolve it in a small saucepan.

  5. Add the fruit syrup and Madeira wine to the gelatine when hot, then stir in lemon juice and sugar if needed. Strain into a basin.

  6. Place the basin on ice and stir frequently.

  7. Whip the cream until stiff and mix it with the gelatine mixture when it is about to set.

  8. Pour the mixture carefully over the arranged fruit in the dish.

  9. Chill the dish on ice until ready to serve.

  10. Sprinkle the top with finely chopped pistachios and garnish with almond strips.

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. Pistachio + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together693 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + pistachiotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

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

  3. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, madeira wine, sugar, cream, pistachio, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Cherryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, madeira wine, sugar, cream, pistachio, almond. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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