Name: Small Vol-au-vents
Ingredients: 88g soft crumb; strawberries; sugar; whipped cream

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Small Vol-au-vents

Ingredients

88g soft crumb
strawberries
sugar
whipped cream

Directions

Prepare the filling

Break up the strawberries and mix with enough sugar to sweeten them.

Assemble and serve

Fill the soft crumb with the sweetened strawberries.
Top with a few spoonfuls of whipped cream.
Serve immediately.

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 + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Soft crumb: Forms the edible base that holds the filling and soaks up juices.
Strawberries: Provide the main fruit flavour, juice and tartness for the filling.
Sugar: Sweetens the strawberries and draws out some of their juice.
Whipped cream: Adds richness and a light, soft texture on top.

“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.