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Dessert

Stone Cream

A chilled custard made with isinglass, thin cream, sugar, lemon rind, sherry, and served over preserved apricots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sherry and apricot work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 173 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Stone Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Dissolve the isinglass in a small quantity of water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the dissolved isinglass and thin cream, then sweeten to taste.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.

  4. Grate the lemon rind into the sherry or raisin wine.

Assemble and set

  1. Line a dish with preserved apricots or another light-colored preserve.

  2. Pour the cream carefully over the preserve when almost cold, ensuring they do not mix.

  3. Make the cream the day 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. Sherry + apricottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together173 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Lemon + apricottop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,098 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + sherrytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + apricottop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,630 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

Isinglass
Gelatin-like protein that sets the cream into a firm, sliceable custard when cooled.
Thin cream
Provides richness and a smooth, creamy body to the set dessert.
Sherry or raisin wine
Adds aroma and a mildly sweet, fruity flavor infused with lemon rind.
Preserved apricots
Forms a fruity base layer beneath the cream and adds sweetness and flavor.

The step that matters

Pour the cream over the preserve when almost cold. If the cream is still hot, it can disturb and mix into the preserve layer; cooling it until nearly set keeps the two layers distinct.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, sherry, apricot. 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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