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Dessert

Russian Cream

A chilled custard dessert made with milk, sugar, egg yolks, and gelatin, folded with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Russian Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Dissolve the gelatin in 1 cup of milk.

  2. In a saucepan, combine 1½ pints of milk and ¾ cup of sugar; heat until sugar dissolves.

  3. Add the yolks of 4 eggs and cook until thickened.

Set and serve

  1. Remove from heat and fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Pour the mixture into a mold and let it cool.

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. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable cream as it cools.
Milk
Forms the base of the cream and adds richness and a soft texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and helps balance the richness of the milk and eggs.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard base and add richness and smoothness.
Egg whites
Whipped and folded in to lighten the cream and add airy volume.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Fold gently so the whipped whites keep their air. Stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, leaving the cream dense instead of light.

“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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