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Dessert

Italian Cream

A custard made with eggs, milk, sugar, and cornstarch, topped with whipped egg whites and jelly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine the eggs, sugar, cornstarch, and milk.

  2. Boil slowly for a few minutes, stirring constantly to keep it smooth.

Make the topping and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and lemon juice to the egg whites, mixing well.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the egg white mixture onto the custard.

  4. If using a glass dish, add small spoonfuls of jelly on top of the float.

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

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Sugar and lemon 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

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard, while whites whipped to stiff peaks form the light float on top.
Cornstarch
Starch thickens the milk mixture as it boils, giving the custard body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the meringue and dissolves more easily than granulated sugar in the whites.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that helps stabilize whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Boil slowly while stirring constantly. Cornstarch thickens only when it reaches a boil, and constant stirring prevents scorching and lumps, keeping the custard smooth.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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