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Dessert

Clabber Cream

A sweetened clabber and cream mixture flavored with cinnamon and fruit juice, served with crackers.

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 ↓

Clabber Cream

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Beat the clabber and cream together for 15 minutes.

  2. Sweeten to taste and add cinnamon and fruit juice.

  3. Serve with crackers.

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. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Cream + cinnamontop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,510 recipes

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

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Clabber
Provides a tangy, sour flavor and a thick, spoonable body.
Cream
Adds richness and fat, and softens the sharpness of the clabber.

The step that matters

Beat the clabber and cream together for 15 minutes. Beating incorporates air and breaks up the thickened clabber, giving the cream a smooth, light texture. Beating for the full time without stopping to check can overwork the mixture and make it grainy or dense, so watch its texture as you go.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Peppermintfits 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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