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Dessert

Semolina Cream

A creamy dessert made from semolina, milk, gelatin, sugar, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Semolina and sugar work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 351 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Semolina Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the semolina

  1. Soak the semolina in ½ pint of milk for 1 hour.

  2. Combine the soaked semolina with another 1 pint of milk.

  3. Simmer gently for about 30 minutes.

Add the gelatine

  1. Boil the remaining 1 pint of milk.

  2. Pour the boiled milk over the gelatin and stir until the gelatin dissolves.

  3. Mix the gelatin with the semolina.

  4. Sweeten to taste and add flavoring to taste.

Set and serve

  1. Stir until the cream begins to set.

  2. Pour the set cream into a wet mold.

  3. Turn out the mold when set.

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. Semolina + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together351 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Semolina + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together316 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Semolina
Thickens the milk as it simmers, giving the cream its body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the semolina and gelatine set within.
Gelatine
Sets the cream so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.

The step that matters

Stir until the cream begins to set. Gelatine must be fully dissolved and the mixture stirred evenly before it cools; if it sets unevenly, lumps or weak spots form and the cream will not hold its shape cleanly when turned out.

“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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