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Dessert

Dutch Cream

A chilled custard made with sugar, water, eggs, sherry wine, lemon juice, and peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,157 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Dutch Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a saucepan, combine sugar, water, beaten eggs, sherry wine, lemon juice, and lemon peel.

  2. Boil the mixture together, stirring constantly.

  3. Once boiled, remove from heat and let it cool.

Serve

  1. Serve cold.

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. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Eggs
Thicken the mixture as they cook, giving the cream its body and set.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps balance the sharpness of the lemon and sherry.
Sherry wine
Adds aromatic depth and a mellow, slightly nutty flavour.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and fragrant citrus aroma from the juice and peel.

The step that matters

Boil while stirring constantly. Egg proteins can scramble and curdle if the mixture overheats or sits still. Constant stirring spreads heat evenly so the eggs thicken into a smooth cream.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Applefits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, sherry, 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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