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Dessert

Swiss Cream

A chilled custard made from sweet cream, egg whites, and vanilla, served in a dish lined with ladyfingers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Swiss Cream

Why it works: Cream and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,301 recipes. Both carry 2-nonanone, which smells fruity, floral. The science ↓

Swiss Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth.

  2. Heat the cream in a saucepan until it begins to boil.

Make the custard

  1. Add the beaten egg whites to the boiling cream and cook for 5 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Flavor with vanilla.

Serve

  1. Pour the mixture into a dish lined with lady fingers.

  2. 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  2. Egg + vanillatop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together27,347 recipes

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

  3. Cream + eggtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together42,166 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Cream and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,301 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

Sweet cream
Provides the rich fat and body that make up most of the dessert.
Egg whites
Whipped to a foam and cooked, they set the mixture and give it a light, airy structure.

The step that matters

Cooking the egg whites in the boiling cream. Stirring constantly keeps the egg whites from clumping or scrambling on the bottom of the pan, and the mixture needs to cook long enough for the proteins to set it smoothly.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Raspberryfits about as well
  3. Strawberryfits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, egg. 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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