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Dessert

Artificial Strawberries

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Raspberry and strawberry work together. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 815 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, sweet. The science ↓

Artificial Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Shape

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

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

  3. Place the strawberries in a sieve filled with pounded sugar to hold their shape.

Coat and colour

  1. Sift coarse sugar to remove dust and dip the strawberries in raspberry syrup, then in sugar to create seeds.

  2. Dissolve carmine in strong gum and use a fine hair pencil to color the strawberries.

  3. Remove the whisk pieces when dry and leave the strawberries white.

Dry and serve

  1. Let them dry in a warm place for a few hours and 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. Raspberry + strawberrytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together815 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, sweet).

  2. Almond + raspberrytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together552 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  3. Almond + strawberrytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  5. Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Almond paste
Forms the firm, edible body that is shaped into the strawberry.
Pounded sugar
Supports the shape while drying and adds sweetness to the surface.
Raspberry syrup or any other fruit syrup
Sticks the coarse sugar to the surface and adds fruity flavour.
Carmine
Provides the red colour that makes the strawberries look ripe.
Strong gum
Binds the carmine so it adheres evenly to the surface as paint.

The step that matters

Colouring with carmine. Carmine must be fully dissolved in the strong gum and applied thinly with a fine brush. Uneven or heavy application leaves streaks or patches, and the colour sets unevenly as the surface dries.

“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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