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Dessert

Sherry Flip

A chilled dessert made with cream, almonds, sherry, lemon juice, and sugar, served in custard glasses.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Sherry Flip

fills twelve ordinary custard glasses

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Blanch and chop the almonds.

  2. Combine the chopped almonds and cream in a jug.

  3. In another jug, mix the sherry, lemon juice, and enough sugar to sweeten to taste.

Froth and serve

  1. Pour the mixture rapidly from one jug to the other until well frothed.

  2. Pour into individual glasses, enough to fill twelve ordinary custard glasses.

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. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Almond + sherrytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together517 recipes

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

  4. Cream + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

  5. Sherry + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,273 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Provides the rich body and fat that the froth is built on.
Sherry
Adds its own sweetness and aroma to the flavour of the drink.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the sherry and sugar.
Almonds
Contribute nutty flavour and a little texture to the chopped pieces.

The step that matters

Pouring rapidly between the jugs. Pouring fast and from a height traps air into the cream, which is what creates the froth. Slow pouring gives a flat, thin mixture instead of a light, frothy one.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, almond, sherry, 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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