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Dessert

Artificial Strawberries

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Shape the strawberries

  1. Make almond paste and roll it into the size of a strawberry.

  2. Shape the paste in your hands to resemble a strawberry and insert a piece of whisk in the stalk end.

  3. Place the prepared strawberries in a sieve filled with pounded sugar to hold them upright.

Coat and finish

  1. Sift coarse sugar through a coarse sieve and then a finer one to remove dust.

  2. Dip the strawberries in syrup of raspberries or other fruit, then coat them in sugar to create the appearance of seeds.

  3. Once dry, brush the strawberries with carmine dissolved in strong gum to give them a shiny finish.

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 solid, shapeable body of each strawberry.
Pounded sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine, dry base that holds the shaped strawberries upright.
Coarse sugar
Forms the seed-like speckled surface when pressed onto the syrup coating.
Syrup of raspberries or other fruit
Adds fruity flavour and a tacky layer that makes the sugar stick.
Carmine
Provides the red colour that makes the strawberries look ripe.
Strong gum
Binds the carmine to the surface and gives a glossy, shiny finish.

The step that matters

Let the syrup-dipped strawberries dry before brushing. The sugar coat must set on a tacky syrup layer, and a wet surface would let the carmine and gum smear or run, dulling the colour and gloss.

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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