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Dessert

Strawberry Cream

A chilled strawberry dessert made with stewed strawberries, gelatin, lemon juice, sugar, whipped cream, and optional carmine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 the strawberry base

  1. Rub the stewed strawberries through a sieve.

  2. Soak the gelatine in a little cold water, then stir it over low heat until dissolved.

  3. Add the lemon juice and sugar to the strawberry puree.

Set and serve

  1. Gradually fold in the whipped cream and add carmine if desired.

  2. Pour the mixture into a wetted mould and refrigerate until set.

  3. Once set, turn out the cream and decorate with fresh strawberries.

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. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + creamtop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid strawberry mixture into a firm, sliceable cream when chilled.
Whipped cream
Adds fat and airy lightness, giving the set cream a softer, richer texture.
Stewed strawberries
Provide the main strawberry flavour and colour, and the puree forms the body of the cream.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness and sharpens the strawberry flavour.

The step that matters

Dissolving the gelatine. Gelatine must be fully dissolved over gentle heat, not boiled, and well mixed in. Boiling weakens its setting power, and undissolved granules leave the cream rubbery or patchy.

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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