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Dessert

American Cream Squares

A sweet confection made by mixing icing sugar, cream, and flavouring, then rolling and cutting into squares.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

American Cream Squares

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Sift the icing sugar through a wire sieve.

  2. Mix the cream and flavouring until it forms a firm paste.

  3. Let it sit for 1 hour.

  4. Turn the mixture onto a marble slab or a well-dusted paste board with icing sugar.

  5. Knead the paste briefly to blend the cream and sugar.

Shape the squares

  1. Take half the mixture and roll it out to ½ inch thick using a sugared rolling pin.

  2. Cut the rolled cream into squares with a sharp knife dipped in icing sugar.

  3. Place the squares on a dish or tin in a warm, dry place to harden.

  4. Add 2 or 3 drops of colouring to the remaining mixture and knead until it is a delicate pink.

  5. Cut the pink mixture into squares.

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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

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

  3. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Icing sugar
Provides the sweetness and bulk that forms the firm, sliceable paste.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat so the sugar binds into a pliable paste.
Cream of tartar
Stabilises the sugar mixture and helps keep the paste smooth and fine-textured.

The step that matters

Letting the paste rest and hardening the squares. Icing sugar mixed with cream needs time to firm up before rolling and cutting. Kneading only briefly and allowing the cut squares to dry in a warm, dry place lets the sugar crystallise and set, so the squares hold their shape instead of softening or sticking.

“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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