Skip to main content
Main

Frosted Codlins and Cream

Frosted codlins are boiled, buttered, sugared, baked until frosted, and served cold with tart cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Frosted Codlins and Cream

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the codlins

  1. Boil the codlins gently in spring water with a little roche alum until they are slightly more than half done.

  2. Peel off the outer skin of the codlins and rub them with oiled butter.

Frost and serve

  1. Sift fine loaf sugar generously over the codlins.

  2. Place the codlins on a tin plate and let them stand in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) until the sugar has a frost-like appearance.

  3. Serve the codlins cold, surrounded by finely perfumed tart cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Codlins
Provide the fruit that is cooked, then served cold as the main element.
Fine loaf sugar
Forms the sweet, frost-like crust on the surface as it dries in the oven.
Tart cream
Adds richness and cooling contrast that balances the sharp, sweet fruit.
Oiled butter
Adds a thin fat coating that helps the sugar adhere to the fruit.

The step that matters

Letting the sugar frost in the slow oven. Sugar dries into a frost only at low heat; too hot and it melts, darkens or caramelises unevenly, while too short a time leaves it wet and grainy.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes