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Dessert

Fruit Creams, and Italian Creams

A chilled dessert made by flavoring cream with fruit juice or jam, optionally colored with cochineal, and served frothy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fruit Creams, and Italian Creams

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. For strawberries, crush the fruit and sprinkle sugar over it to extract juice.

  2. For other fruits, simmer them in a little syrup, then drain well.

Make the cream

  1. Mix the cream with the sweetened juice or fruit jelly/jam to flavor it.

  2. Add a few drops of prepared cochineal if desired for color.

  3. Add lemon juice to the mixture.

  4. Blend the ingredients well, then lightly whisk or mill them to a froth.

  5. Skim off the froth and place it on a fine sieve to drain, or fill glasses directly.

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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Cream + syruptop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + syruptop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Lemon and sugar 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
Whipped into a froth, it forms the light, airy body of the dessert.
Fruit juice or fruit jelly/jam
Supplies the fruit flavor and sweetness that flavors the cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Blend, then whisk to a froth. Cream whips best when cold and blended only until it holds soft peaks; overbeating turns it grainy and can cause it to separate into butter and liquid.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, syrup. 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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