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Dessert

Clotted Cream

Clotted cream is a thickened dairy product made by heating milk, adding rose water and mace, mixing with egg yolks, and adding cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Rose and mace work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 498 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Clotted Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan, adding the rose water and a little mace.

  2. When it boils, strain the mixture.

  3. Mix the strained mixture with the well-beaten egg yolks.

  4. Add the cream and stir over low heat, but do not let it boil.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a bowl and let it sit until the next day.

  2. Remove the top layer and serve in a glass dish.

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. Rose + macetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together498 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

  3. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Add richness and, when gently heated, help thicken the cream into a smooth, set texture.
Cream
Provides fat, which gives the dish its rich body and thick texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that is combined with the cream and yolks.
Rose water
Adds a floral aroma that flavours the cream.

The step that matters

Keep the cream mixture below boiling. Egg yolks can scramble and the mixture can curdle or split if it boils. Gentle low heat lets the yolks thicken the cream smoothly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Macethe original
  4. Peppermintfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, cream, egg, rose. 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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