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Dessert

Italian Cream

A chilled custard dessert made with lime or lemon zest, brandy, sugar, cream, and isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lime and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 937 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cream

  1. Rub the sugar with the grated rind of the limes or lemon and scrape it into a deep dish or bowl.

  2. Add the brandy, sifted sugar, lemon or lime juice, and thick cream, then whisk until well combined.

Set and serve

  1. In a separate pot, boil the isinglass in water until completely dissolved.

  2. Strain the dissolved isinglass into the cream mixture and beat for a while.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until set.

  4. Once set, turn it out onto a dish and garnish with sliced candied peel.

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 + orangetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together937 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  3. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Brandy + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together11,939 recipes

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

Brandy and sugar 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

Thick cream
Provides the rich fat base that gives the dessert its smooth, creamy body.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when unmolded.
Brandy
Adds a warm, aromatic flavour that complements the citrus.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the sharpness of the citrus juice.
Limes or lemon
Supply acidity and aromatic citrus oils from both rind and juice.

The step that matters

Strain the dissolved isinglass into the cream mixture. Isinglass must be fully dissolved and then blended in evenly; if it cools and clumps or is not mixed through, the cream will set unevenly or in streaks.

Swap the lime

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against brandy, sugar, cream, orange. 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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