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Dessert

Artificial Strawberries

A confection made from almond paste shaped like strawberries, coated in sugar and syrup, and dyed with carmine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Artificial Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Make the paste

  1. Make almond paste.

  2. Roll the almond paste into the size of a strawberry.

  3. Shape the paste in your hands.

  4. Insert a piece of whisk into the stalk end.

Prepare the sugar

  1. Coarsely pound some sugar.

  2. Sift the sugar through a coarse sieve and a finer one to remove dust.

  3. Place the prepared strawberries in a sieve filled with pounded sugar.

Coat and finish

  1. Dip the strawberries in syrup.

  2. Dip the strawberries in sugar to create the seeds.

  3. Once dry, apply carmine with a fine hair pencil for shine.

  4. Remove the whisk pieces, leaving the hole white.

  5. Let them dry in a warm place for a few hours.

  6. Serve on plates with strawberry leaves.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Almond + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Almond + syruptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Almond paste
Forms the shaped body of each strawberry, giving a firm, malleable base to model.
Pounded sugar
Coats the surface to create the seed-like texture and a sweet, dry outer layer.
Syrup of raspberries or other fruit
Adds fruit flavour and sweetness, and gives the sugar coating something to cling to.
Carmine dissolved in strong gum
Provides red colour, and the gum gives a glossy sheen once dry.

The step that matters

Let them dry in a warm place for a few hours. The syrup and gum layers must dry fully before handling or serving, otherwise the sugar coating can smear or dissolve and the shine will look sticky rather than glossy.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Pistachiofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, syrup. 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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