Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓
Strawberry Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the strawberries
Mash or bruise the strawberries, caps included, and mix with 1 teacup of granulated sugar for each quart.
Let the mixture stand for several hours, then strain through a thin, coarse cloth.
Make the cream
Add 4 teacups of white sugar to the cream and mix in the berry juice.
Whip the cream using an egg beater until frothy.
Pour two-thirds of the whipped cream into a freezer, reserving the rest to add later.
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.
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Thick sweet cream
- Provides fat and body, so the whipped cream holds air and freezes rich and smooth.
- Strawberries
- Supply the main flavor and acidity, and their juice gives the cream its colour.
- Granulated sugar
- Draws juice out of the berries and sweetens them, softening their texture.
- White sugar
- Sweetens the cream and helps keep the frozen texture soft rather than icy.
The step that matters
Straining the berry mixture. Standing draws juice from the mashed berries, and straining through a fine cloth removes pulp and seeds so the cream freezes smooth rather than grainy.
“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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