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Artificial Cream , to Eat Ivith Fruit or Fruit Tart

A custard-like cream made from milk, sugar, eggs, and lemon juice, served with fruit or fruit tart.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,053 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Artificial Cream , to Eat Ivith Fruit or Fruit Tart

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Pour the milk into a saucepan and add the sugar.

  2. Heat on a very low fire, stirring constantly.

  3. Break in the egg yolks and continue stirring until thickened, but do not let it boil.

Finish the cream

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Once the cream is thick, fold in the beaten egg whites and lemon juice.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  4. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the milk as they set gently over low heat, giving the cream body.
Egg whites
Beaten until stiff, they add airy lightness to the finished cream.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream that the egg yolks thicken.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the cream.

The step that matters

Keep the custard below boiling. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the mixture boils, the proteins tighten and curdle, leaving a grainy texture instead of a smooth cream.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, sugar, 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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