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Dessert

Italian Cream, Another Way

A sweet, citrus-flavored cream sauce made with flour, ratafia, sugar, lemon peel, eggs, orange flower water, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Italian Cream, Another Way

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, ratafia, sugar, lemon peel, egg yolks, whole egg, and orange flower water until well combined.

  2. Gradually blend in the cream.

  3. Heat the mixture in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring until it begins to boil.

  4. If the mixture is too thick, add a little milk to reach desired consistency.

Serve

  1. Serve over petits choux, meringue, pancakes, or apple purée.

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 + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 and add richness as they set when heated.
Whole egg
Adds structure and helps the cream thicken when heated.
Flour
Stabilises the custard so it thickens without curdling when boiled.
Cream
Provides fat and body, giving the custard a smooth, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the floral and citrus flavours.

The step that matters

Heating the mixture until it begins to boil. Egg yolks and flour thicken the mixture as it heats, but overheating or boiling too hard can scramble the eggs and make the cream grainy. Stir constantly over medium heat and stop once it starts to boil.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, lemon, egg, cream, milk. 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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