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Dessert

Italian Cheese

A sweet, thickened cream dessert flavored with lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 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 ↓

Italian Cheese

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Scald the cream.

  2. Whisk the cream until smooth.

  3. Add the sugar, juice of 3 lemons, and grated rind of 2 lemons.

  4. Let it sit for 30 minutes.

Set and drain

  1. Whisk until very thick.

  2. Pour into a mould with holes or a thin cloth in a colander.

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

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Cream
Forms the rich body and smooth, creamy texture of the cheese.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the sharp lemon flavour.
Lemons
Their acidic juice thickens the cream and adds bright, sour flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the lemon juice and rind. The acid in lemon juice causes cream to thicken and curdle into a soft set. Adding it at this point decides the final texture, so the mixture needs careful whisking until it is very thick.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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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