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Dessert

Fromage Bavarois Aux Avelines

A Bavarian cheese made with hazelnuts, cream, sugar, and clarified isinglass, finished with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Fromage Bavarois Aux Avelines

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filberts

  1. Skin the filberts and wash them in cold water.

  2. Drain and wipe them dry.

  3. In a large pan over moderate heat, stir the filberts until they turn a fine yellow tint.

  4. Remove from heat, let cool, and pound with a few drops of water to prevent oiliness.

Make the cream base

  1. In a basin, mix the cream and sugar, and let infuse for 1 hour.

  2. Strain through a tammy.

  3. Add the warm clarified isinglass to the mixture.

  4. Pour the preparation into a tin dome or basin placed in pounded ice.

  5. After 15 minutes, stir the cream with a large spoon at intervals until it thickens.

  6. Continue stirring until it reaches a smooth, flowing consistency.

Mold and set

  1. Remove from ice.

  2. Gradually mix in the whipped cream until well combined.

  3. Mold immediately.

  4. Set in ice for 1.5 hours before serving.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Filbert + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77 recipes

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

  3. Filbert + sugartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Filberts
Provide the main hazelnut flavour and aroma, and add body to the cream.
Cream
Gives the dessert its rich texture and fat-based smoothness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and softens the set texture.
Clarified isinglass
Acts as a gelling agent that sets the cream into a firm shape.
Whipped cream
Adds air and lightness, making the set cream more tender.

The step that matters

Stirring the cream while it chills. Stirring over ice keeps the cream cold and evenly thickened, so it forms a smooth texture instead of large ice crystals or lumps before the gelatin-like isinglass sets it.

Swap the filbert

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Filbertthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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