Name: Ditto, with Strawberries
Ingredients: ¾ pound strawberries; 6 ounces pounded sugar; 1 small infusion of cochineal or carmine; cream

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 ↓

Ditto, with Strawberries

Ingredients

¾ pound strawberries
6 ounces pounded sugar
1 small infusion of cochineal or carmine
cream

Directions

Pick out the finest strawberries and squeeze the remainder through a fine sieve.
Add the strawberry juice to the cream along with the pounded sugar and the infusion of cochineal or carmine.
Mix well and place the saved strawberries on top of the cream for decoration.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries: Provide the flavour and the juice that colours and sweetens the cream.
Pounded sugar: Sweetens the cream and balances the tartness of the strawberry juice.
Cream: Forms the rich, soft body of the dish that the strawberry juice is folded into.
Cochineal or carmine: Adds a red colour to the cream.

“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.