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Dessert

Crushed Strawberry Cream

A frozen dessert made with crushed strawberries, orange juice, powdered sugar, eggs, cream, vanilla, and granulated sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,371 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Crushed Strawberry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Crush the strawberries in an earthen pan.

  2. Add the juice of the two oranges and the powdered sugar to the crushed strawberries.

Make the custard

  1. In a separate bowl, stir together the granulated sugar and eggs until creamy.

  2. Add the cream to the egg mixture and heat until just scalding, stirring constantly.

  3. Strain the mixture, cool it, and then freeze.

Freeze and finish

  1. When the mixture is half frozen, add the crushed strawberries and mix well before finishing freezing.

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. Orange + vanillatop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor, color and moisture for the frozen cream.
Eggs
Enrich the base and add richness and structure to the frozen custard.
Cream
Supplies fat for a smooth, rich texture that resists large ice crystals.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the custard and lowers the freezing point for a softer texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the crushed strawberries and dissolves easily into the fruit.
Orange juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavor.

The step that matters

Heating the cream and egg mixture until just scalding. Eggs thicken and can curdle if overheated, so stir constantly and stop as soon as the mixture is just scalding. Straining afterward removes any small cooked bits and keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, cream, vanilla. 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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