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Dessert

Steeple Cream

A gelatinous cream made with ivory, hart's-horn, almonds, and cream, sweetened with sugar and flavored with amber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Steeple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine ivory shavings and hart's-horn shavings in a stone bottle.

  2. Fill the bottle to the neck with water and add gum-arabic and gum-tragacanth.

  3. Seal the bottle tightly and place it in a pot of water with hay at the bottom of the pot.

  4. Let it stand for 6 hours, then remove and let it sit for 1 hour before opening.

  5. Strain the mixture to obtain a strong jelly.

Make the cream

  1. Blend blanched almonds until very fine, then mix with thick cream and let it sit briefly.

  2. Strain the almond mixture and combine it with the jelly.

  3. Heat the mixture until scalding hot, then sweeten to taste with double-refined sugar.

  4. Remove from heat, add a little amber, and pour into small high molds.

Serve

  1. Once cooled, turn out the creams and serve with cold whipped cream.

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. Almond + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

  3. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Blanched almonds
Blended fine to give the cream body and a rich, nutty flavour.
Thick cream
Adds fat for a smooth, rich texture and mouthfeel.
Double-refined sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the richness of the cream.
Gum-arabic
Helps stabilise the liquid so it sets into a smooth, cohesive jelly.
Gum-tragacanth
Thickens and stabilises the mixture, supporting a firm, smooth set.

The step that matters

Heat until scalding hot. Heating the mixture to scalding hot ensures it is fully combined and smooth before molding. Overheating can cause the cream to separate or become grainy, while under-heating leaves the sugar and gums poorly dissolved.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

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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