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Dessert

Solid Cream

A thickened cream dessert made with lime juice, sugar, brandy, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Solid Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine the strained lime juice and pounded sugar in a bowl.

  2. Add the brandy and cream to the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture from one cup to another until it thickens.

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

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

  2. Brandy + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,635 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  3. Sugar + brandytop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Lime + brandytop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together165 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  5. Lime + sugartop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,332 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and brandy barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 11,939 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
Its fat gives the finished mixture body and a rich, thick texture.
Lime juice
Its acid thickens the cream and gives the dish a sharp, bright flavour.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the acidity of the lime juice.
Brandy
Adds aroma and warmth to the flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Pouring until it thickens. The acid in the lime juice thickens the cream gradually, so judge by the texture rather than the clock. Stop when it has thickened as described, because the change depends on the acid and the cream's fat working together.

Swap the lime

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits better
  3. Strawberryfits better
  4. Limethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, brandy, 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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