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Dessert

Sack Cream

A thickened cream dessert made with raw cream, egg yolk, white wine, sugar, and lemon peel, served with dry toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Sack Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Boil the cream in a saucepan.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolk, white wine, sugar, and lemon peel.

  3. Stir over gentle heat until thickened like rich cream.

Cool and serve

  1. Remove from heat and let it cool.

  2. Serve in glasses with long pieces of dry toast.

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. White wine + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Cream + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,760 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-decalactone (peach, creamy).

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

Raw cream
Provides fat for richness and a smooth, full body.
Egg yolk
Thickens the cream as its proteins set gently with heat.
White wine
Adds acidity and bright flavor that balances the richness.
Sugar
Adds sweetness to balance the wine and lemon.

The step that matters

Stir over gentle heat until thickened. Egg yolk proteins set at moderate temperatures and can curdle or scramble if the heat is too high or the mixture is left unstirred. Gentle, constant stirring lets the mixture thicken smoothly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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.

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