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Dessert

To Whip Cream

A dessert of whipped cream, sherry-soaked biscuits, and decorative sugar, citron, and angelica.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and angelica match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 189 recipes. Both carry (e,e)-2,4-decadienal, which smells fatty, deep fried. The science ↓

To Whip Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Rub the lemon with the lump sugar to extract essence.

  2. Mix egg whites, cream, sherry, and sweetened sugar.

  3. Whip the mixture in a clean flat pan until frothy.

  4. Remove froth with a fine sieve and let it stand.

Assemble and decorate

  1. Soak macaroons and biscuits in sherry until steeped.

  2. Carefully place soaked biscuits in baskets and fill with whipped cream.

  3. Decorate with coloured sugar, green citron, and angelica.

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. Lemon + angelicatop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together189 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  2. Biscuit + angelicatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together69 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

  4. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  5. Cream + biscuittop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,235 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that gives the cream its light, airy structure.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, and whips into a softer, more stable filling.
Sherry
Flavours the cream and soaks into the biscuits, softening them.
Macaroons
Absorb sherry and soften, giving a moist, flavourful base.
Savoy biscuits
Absorb sherry and soften, providing a moist base for the cream.

The step that matters

Removing the froth with a fine sieve. Whipped egg white foam collapses quickly if disturbed, and the froth must be lifted off gently and allowed to stand so the cream stays light rather than watery.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Raisinfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, sherry, sugar, biscuit, angelica. 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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