Name: Strawberries in Sherry
Ingredients: strawberries; pounded sugar; sherry or Madeira; new corks; melted resin

Why it works: Sugar and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,141 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberries in Sherry

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Remove the stalks from the strawberries.
Place the strawberries in bottles.
Sprinkle pounded sugar over the strawberries.

Fill and seal

When the fruit reaches the neck of the bottle, fill with sherry or Madeira.
Cork the bottles with new corks.
Dip the corks in melted resin.

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 + sherrytop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,141 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

Strawberries: Provide the fruit that softens and flavours the sherry as it steeps.
Pounded sugar: Adds sweetness and helps draw juice out of the strawberries.
Sherry or madeira: Acts as the liquid that soaks into the fruit and carries its flavour.

“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.