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Dessert

Steeple Cream

A dessert made by setting a gelatinous mixture of hartshorn, isinglass, and gums with a cream and almond base, sweetened and chilled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Steeple Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the jelly

  1. Combine hartshorn and isinglass in a stone bottle.

  2. Fill the bottle with water to the neck.

  3. Add a small amount of gum-arabic and gum-dragon.

  4. Seal the bottle and place it in a pot of water with hay at the bottom.

  5. Let it sit for 6 hours, then remove and let it stand for 1 hour before opening.

  6. Strain the mixture to obtain a strong jelly.

Make the cream

  1. Blend the blanched almonds with the thick cream and let it sit briefly.

  2. Strain the almond mixture and combine it with the jelly.

  3. Heat the mixture until scalding hot and sweeten with double-refined sugar.

  4. Remove from heat, add a little amber, and pour into small high pots.

Serve

  1. Once cooled, turn the pots out and serve with cold cream around them.

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 + creamtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,130 recipes

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

  3. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

What each ingredient does

Hartshorn
Dissolves and sets into a firm jelly that gives the cream its body.
Isinglass
Gelatinous fish protein that helps the mixture set into a firm, tender jelly.
Blanched almonds
Provide the nutty, milky flavour and richness of the cream base.
Thick cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the set cream a smooth, silky texture.
Double-refined sugar
Adds sweetness and balances the richness of the cream and almonds.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until scalding hot. Heating must be enough to melt the jelly fully into the cream so it sets evenly when cooled; overheating can break down the setting power of the gelatinous ingredients.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Pistachiofits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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