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Strawberry Cream Cheese Frosting

"This foolproof frosting keeps it simple. While very sweet, it's just the thing to balance the natural flavor of a homestyle scratch cake recipe. I used it the first time to lighten up a cake made with a heavy whole grain white flour. Uh-mazing!"

By allrecipes · From Open Recipes · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream cheese and strawberry jam share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and 19 recipes mention both. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

The recipe

8 servings
Prep15 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Step-by-step directions aren't available for this recipe. See the full recipe at the source →

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Cream cheese + strawberry jamtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Butter + cream cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together35,031 recipes

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

  4. Strawberry jam + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together98 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl cinnamate (strawberry).

  5. Cream cheese + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,934 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Sugar and vanilla share little aroma chemistry, yet 35,031 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the vanilla

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

  1. Vanillathe original
  2. Strawberryabout as good a flavor fit

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, cream cheese, sugar, strawberry jam. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).