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Cream

A chilled fruit cream made from currants, raspberries, sago, sugar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Cream

Why it works: Rice and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,744 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fruit juice

  1. Boil the currants and raspberries, then press the juice from them.

Make the cream

  1. In a separate pot, boil the sago or ground rice with the sugar and water for 20 minutes until it resembles jelly.

  2. Add the fruit juice to the mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until cold, then turn out to serve.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Rice + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,744 recipes

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

  2. Currant + sugartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,256 recipes
  3. Currant + ricetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together497 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Currant and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,256 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

Pearl sago or ground rice
Starch that thickens the liquid as it boils, setting the cream into a firm, jelly-like body.
Currants
Provide tart acidity and the main fruit flavor and color.
Raspberries
Add floral sweetness and aroma alongside the currants.
Loaf sugar
Adds sweetness and helps give the set cream a smooth, clear texture.

The step that matters

Boiling the sago or ground rice until it resembles jelly. Starch grains must boil long enough to swell and gelatinize fully; undercooked starch stays grainy and fails to set firmly when chilled.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, sugar. 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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