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Dessert

Italian Cream

A custard dessert made from cream, sugar, lime rind, cinnamon, isinglass, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. Sweeten the cream with sugar.

  2. Boil the cream with lime rind and cinnamon.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Mix the strained cream with dissolved isinglass while hot.

  5. Add the mixture to the well-beaten egg yolks.

Set and shape

  1. Stir until completely cool.

  2. Pour into a shape or mold.

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. Lime + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

  5. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Provides richness and body, giving the set dessert a smooth, creamy texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as they combine with the warm cream.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when cooled.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the richness of the yolks and cream.

The step that matters

Adding the isinglass mixture to the egg yolks. The cream must be hot when the isinglass is mixed in so it stays dissolved and evenly distributed. Adding the warm mixture gradually to beaten yolks, rather than the reverse, helps prevent the yolks from scrambling and keeps the custard smooth.

Swap the lime

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, cinnamon, egg. 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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