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Dessert

Steeple Cream

A dessert made from a jelly of ivory and hartshorn, blended with almond‑cream mixture and sweetened with sugar, served with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Steeple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine ivory and hartshorn in a stone bottle.

  2. Fill the bottle with water to the neck.

  3. Add gum-arabic and gum-tragacanth.

  4. Seal the bottle tightly.

  5. Place the sealed bottle in a pot of water with hay at the bottom. Let the mixture stand for 6 hours.

  6. Remove the bottle and let it sit for 1 hour before opening.

  7. Strain the mixture to obtain a strong jelly.

Make the almond cream

  1. Finely beat the blanched almonds.

  2. Mix the beaten almonds with thick cream. Let the almond-cream mixture sit briefly.

  3. Strain the almond-cream mixture again.

Combine and set

  1. Mix the strained almond-cream mixture with the jelly.

  2. Heat the mixture until scalding hot. Sweeten the heated mixture with double-refined sugar.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat. Add a little amber to the mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture into small high gallipots. Once the gallipots have cooled, turn them out.

  5. Serve the cooled dessert with cold whipped 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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Ivory
Forms the base of the jelly that gives the dessert its body.
Hartshorn
Gels with the other ingredients to set the jelly.
Blanched almonds
Supply the almond flavour and body of the cream.
Thick cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture.

The step that matters

Strain the mixture to obtain a strong jelly. Straining removes solids so the jelly sets clear and smooth. Incomplete straining leaves grit that spoils the texture of the finished cream.

Swap the almond

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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.

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