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Dessert

Stone Cream

A chilled dessert made with fruit preserve, lemon juice, cream, isinglass, milk, wine, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Stone Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the preserve in a glass dish and pour 3 tablespoons of lemon juice on top.

Make the cream

  1. Boil 1 pint of cream with ¾ ounce of isinglass dissolved in a little warm milk.

  2. Add wine and loaf sugar to the cream mixture.

  3. Keep stirring until the mixture is warm.

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

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

  2. Strawberry + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Strawberry + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together217 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid hexyl ester (sweet, green).

  4. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Strawberry + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cream
Forms the rich body of the dessert and sets softly when chilled.
Isinglass
Gelatin-like setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape.
Preserve
Supplies fruit flavour and sweetness for the base of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fruit flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Boil the cream with isinglass. Isinglass must be fully dissolved before the cream is boiled. Undissolved clumps will not set evenly, leaving a grainy or uneven texture when the cream cools.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (strawberry, cream, milk, wine, sugar):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against strawberry, cream, milk, wine, sugar. 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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