Skip to main content
Dessert

Stone Cream

A chilled dessert made with milk or cream, stale sponge biscuits, jam, lemon, and gelatin or corn‑flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,955 recipes. Both carry hexanal, which smells green, grassy. The science ↓

Stone Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Make a pint of blancmange using gelatin or corn-flour.

  2. Slice the stale sponge biscuits and place them at the bottom of a glass dish.

  3. Spread a little jam on top of the biscuits.

  4. Grate the lemon rind over the jam and squeeze the strained lemon juice on top.

Set and serve

  1. Pour the blancmange over the biscuits while still liquid.

  2. Let it stand in a cool place until set.

  3. Garnish with knobs of the same jam or blanched almonds.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  2. Biscuit + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Biscuit + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together72 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Lemon + corntop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Milk or cream
Forms the creamy body of the blancmange once thickened and set.
Sponge biscuits
Soak up the liquid and form a soft, absorbent base layer under the cream.
Jam
Adds sweetness and fruity flavour between the biscuits and the cream.
Lemon
Its rind and juice add aromatic brightness and acidity to the sweet layers.
Gelatine or corn-flour
Thickens the liquid so the blancmange sets firm enough to hold its shape.

The step that matters

Pour the blancmange while still liquid. If the blancmange has already begun to set, it will not soak into the biscuits or bond with the jam layer, leaving a split, uneven dessert. Pour it while it is still fluid, then let it cool undisturbed so the gelatine or starch can set evenly.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, biscuit, corn. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesBaking Powder BiscuitBaking Powder Biscuit119 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipes