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Dessert

Strawberry Cream

A chilled gelatin dessert made with strawberry juice, lemon, sugar, egg whites, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Strawberry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup cold water for 1 hour.

  2. Dissolve the gelatine in ½ cup boiling water.

Make the base

  1. Mix in the strawberry juice, lemon juice, and sugar; strain and let cool slightly.

  2. Whip the egg whites until stiff and whip the cream separately.

  3. When the gelatine mixture begins to thicken, lightly whip it with a Dover beater.

Assemble and set

  1. Fold in the whipped egg whites and then the whipped cream carefully.

  2. Pour into a wet mold and chill on ice until set.

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

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

  2. Strawberry + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Strawberry + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,206 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Sheet gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they add lightness and an airy texture to the set cream.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, creamy mouthfeel to the dessert.
Strawberry juice
Provides the main strawberry flavour and liquid base of the dessert.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the mixture and balances the tartness of the fruit and lemon.

The step that matters

Whipping the gelatine mixture as it thickens. If the gelatine is too cold or too set, the foam and cream will not blend smoothly and lumps or weeping may form. Whipping at the right moment, when it is thickened but still pourable, traps air evenly and gives a light, uniform texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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