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 Pie
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare
Bake the two pie crusts until golden.
Fill the crusts with fresh strawberries.
Sprinkle sugar over the berries.
Warm and serve
Heat in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until warmed through, without cooking.
Stack one pie on top of the other.
Serve with whipped cream or plain cream in a pitcher.
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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Sugar + creamtop 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
- Pie crusts
- Provide a baked base that holds the berry filling in shape.
- Fresh strawberries
- Supply the fruit filling, moisture and bright flavor.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the berries and draws out some of their juice.
- Cream
- Adds richness and a cool, creamy contrast to the warm fruit.
The step that matters
Heat until warmed through, without cooking. Strawberries contain a lot of water and soft cell walls. Prolonged heat breaks them down, so they collapse into mush and lose their fresh flavor and bright color. Warming gently keeps the berries intact.
“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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