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Dessert

Swiss Cream

A chilled lemon cream dessert with macaroons and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Swiss Cream

Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Swiss Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Rub the sugar on the rinds of the lemons.

  2. Heat the cream, reserving some to mix with the flour to make a paste.

  3. Add a spoonful or two of hot cream to the flour paste before stirring it into the pan.

  4. Boil the mixture for 4 to 5 minutes.

  5. Pour it into a basin and stir until nearly cold, then add the lemon juice.

Assemble and serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a glass dish with macaroons.

  2. Pour cream over the macaroons, add another layer of cakes, and top with the remaining cream.

  3. Garnish with sliced citron.

  4. Make it the day before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Cream
Forms the body of the custard and gives it a rich, smooth texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and, rubbed on the lemon rinds, draws out their aromatic oils.
Lemons
Add acidity and fresh aroma from the juice and rinds.
Flour
Thickens the cream so it sets to a spoonable consistency when cooked.
Macaroons
Soak up the cream as a layer, adding texture and a sweet almond flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the flour paste to the hot cream. Flour clumps if it meets hot liquid without being thinned first. Mixing it with a little hot cream before it goes into the pan lets the starch disperse evenly, so the cream thickens smoothly instead of turning lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, flour, cinnamon. 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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