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Dessert

Stone Cream

A chilled dessert made with preserves, lemon juice, cream, isinglass, wine, sugar, and blanched almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry and almond work together. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 433 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Stone Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cream

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

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

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

  4. When the mixture is warm, pour it over the preserves in the dish.

Set and decorate

  1. Prepare the dessert the day before serving.

  2. Once completely cool, cut blanched almonds lengthwise and stick them all over the top.

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. Strawberry + almondtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  3. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Isinglass
Gelatinous setting agent that firms the cream so it holds its shape when cut.
Cream
Forms the rich, smooth body of the dessert and carries the setting agent.
Preserve
Adds fruit flavour and sweetness in the base layer under the cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the preserve and cream.

The step that matters

Pour the warm cream over the preserves. The cream must be warm but not hot when poured, so it stays fluid enough to settle evenly over the preserve without mixing into it. Once cool, the isinglass sets it into a firm layer.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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