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Birch's Receipt for Mock Cream

A layered dessert of sponge biscuits, custard, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,427 recipes. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, sweet. The science ↓

Birch's Receipt for Mock Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Mix flour with milk in a saucepan and simmer for 5 minutes.

  2. Beat the egg yolk and stir it into the milk while boiling.

  3. Strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

Make the cream

  1. In a large bowl, combine sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, brandy, sweet wine, and cream.

  2. Whisk the mixture well and remove froth with a skimmer.

  3. Continue whisking until you have enough whipped cream and set aside to drain for 3-4 hours.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer sponge biscuits, ratafia, almonds, nutmeg, lemon peel, currant jelly, and raspberry jam in a deep dish.

  2. Pour the custard mixture over the layered biscuits.

  3. Once the cakes have absorbed the liquor, top with whipped cream and sprinkle with nonpareil comfits.

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. Brandy + winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Flour
Thickens the milk into a custard that holds its body.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the custard as its proteins set with heat.
Heavy cream
Provides richness and, once whipped, the light topping.
Sponge biscuits
Soak up the liquor and custard, giving the dish its soft structure.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor and soaks into the biscuits.

The step that matters

Strain the custard through a fine sieve. Straining removes cooked egg and flour lumps, leaving a smooth custard that blends evenly with the cream and soaks into the biscuits without grainy spots.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, sugar, brandy, wine, cream. 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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