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Dessert

Italian Cream

A custard dessert made with egg yolks, milk, lemon peel, and sugar, layered with sponge cake and topped with frothy egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,832 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Italian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolks, flour, salt, grated lemon peel, and milk until smooth.

  2. Sweeten with pound loaf sugar to taste.

  3. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and stir constantly over medium heat until it thickens.

Layer and serve

  1. In a serving dish, layer some of the cream, then a layer of sponge cake dipped in white wine, and repeat until all ingredients are used.

  2. Top with a thick layer of snow froth made from the beaten egg white and sifted sugar, then brown it lightly with a hot spoon.

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. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 cream as they set when heated, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream, providing moisture and a soft texture.
Flour
Stabilises the custard so it thickens smoothly and holds its body when layered.
Egg white
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, airy topping layer.
Spunge-cake
Soaks up the wine and cream, providing structure and softness between layers.

The step that matters

Stir the cream constantly over medium heat until it thickens. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated or left unstirred, so constant stirring over moderate heat keeps the custard smooth as it thickens.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, milk, sugar, white wine. 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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