Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓
Strawberry Cups
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the custard
Heat the strawberry juice in a saucepan.
Moisten the flour in a little cold milk, then stir it into the hot juice.
Keep stirring until the mixture thickens and becomes smooth, then remove from heat.
Once cooled, add the egg yolks and fold in the beaten egg whites gently.
Bake
Grease custard cups and fill them with the mixture.
Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.
Make the strawberry sauce
For the strawberry sauce, mash and strain enough strawberries to make ½ pint of juice.
Heat the juice until it just boils, then add the lemon juice.
Mix the sugar with the flour and pour the hot juice over it.
Return to heat and cook for 1 minute, then pour into the beaten egg whites while beating well.
Serve
Serve immediately.
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.
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Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Strawberry + milktop 10% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together1,130 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
-
Sauce + sugartop 13% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together5,147 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
- Flour
- Swells with heat and thickens the hot juice into a smooth, set base.
- Egg yolks
- Coagulate on baking to set the custard and add richness.
- Egg whites
- Beaten air folded in gives the cups a light, airy texture.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the strawberry sauce and balances its tartness.
- Lemon juice
- Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour of the sauce.
- Strawberry juice
- Provides the main liquid and strawberry flavour of the custard.
The step that matters
Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Folding keeps the air bubbles in the beaten whites intact. Those bubbles expand in the oven and give the custard its light texture, while stirring vigorously would deflate them and make the cups dense.
Swap the strawberry
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, milk, egg, butter, sauce, lemon, sugar):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Strawberrythe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, milk, egg, butter, sauce, lemon, 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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