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Dessert

Strawberry Pudding

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gelatine base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water until softened.

  2. Add boiling water to the gelatine and stir until dissolved.

  3. Mix in the strawberry juice, lemon juice, and salt; set aside to cool until it begins to thicken.

Whip and fold

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Add sugar to the whipped egg whites and beat together.

  3. Once the gelatine is slightly thickened, beat it until light.

  4. Fold in the whipped egg whites and whipped cream.

Set and serve

  1. Dip a mold in cold water and drain.

  2. Fill the mold with the mixture.

  3. Set aside to harden.

  4. Slice and serve with cake.

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. Cream + sugartop 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

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a firm, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they make the pudding light and airy.
Whipped cream
Adds richness and a soft, creamy texture when folded in.
Strawberry juice
Provides the main flavour and liquid base of the pudding.

The step that matters

Beating the gelatine mixture until light. The gelatine must be only slightly thickened before beating. If it is too set, it will not blend smoothly with the whipped egg whites and cream, and the pudding may turn out lumpy or dense.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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