Skip to main content
Dessert

Rhenish Cream

A custard dessert made with isinglass, milk, lemon juice, eggs, wine, and sugar.

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

Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Rhenish Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Dissolve the isinglass in hot milk.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice and eggs.

  3. Add the white wine and sugar.

  4. Boil gently until thick enough to pour into molds.

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 + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Milk + white winetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together929 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 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

Isinglass
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable cream as it cools.
Eggs
Add richness and help thicken the cream when gently heated.
Milk
Forms the creamy base and provides most of the liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sugar.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and softens the sharpness of the lemon.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the cream.

The step that matters

Boil gently until thick enough to pour into molds.. Eggs thicken as they heat but scramble or curdle if the mixture boils hard. Gentle heat and constant stirring give a smooth, thickened custard that sets when chilled.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, white wine, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Applefits about as well
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, white wine, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesLemon CustardLemon Custard64 recipes