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Dessert

Strawberry Cream

A chilled dessert made with strawberries, sugar, gelatin, lemon juice, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 ↓

Strawberry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle 1 ounce of sugar over the strawberries and pass them through a sieve.

  2. Soak the gelatin in cold water, then heat and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add the remaining sugar and lemon juice to the gelatin mixture and strain it.

Make the cream

  1. Mix the strained mixture with the strawberries thoroughly.

  2. Whip the cream until stiff, then gently fold it into the strawberry mixture.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and refrigerate until set.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavour and colour, and their pulp gives the cream its body.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture into a firm, sliceable structure when chilled.
Cream
Whipped into the mixture to add richness and an airy, light texture.
White sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps balance the tartness of the fruit and lemon.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour and balances the sweetness.

The step that matters

Fold the whipped cream gently into the strawberry mixture. Overmixing or deflating the whipped cream loses the air bubbles that give a light texture. Fold only until combined, and make sure the gelatine mixture is cool but not setting, or it will stiffen before the cream is incorporated.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream. 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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