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Dessert

An Easily-made Dessert

A strawberry dessert made by thickening milk with cornstarch and pouring over fresh strawberries, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

An Easily-made Dessert

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Fill the bottom of a dish with strawberries.

  2. In a saucepan, boil milk and cornstarch together until thickened.

  3. Add salt, sugar, and flavoring to the mixture.

  4. Cool slightly, then pour over the strawberries.

  5. Set aside to cool completely.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream and sugar flavored with vanilla or with whipped cream.

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. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Vanilla + creamtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Strawberries
Form the fruit base and add fresh, sweet flavor under the pudding.
Milk
Provides the liquid and creamy body of the pudding.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it boils, giving the pudding its set texture.

The step that matters

Boil the milk and cornstarch until thickened. Cornstarch only thickens fully when the mixture reaches a boil, and it must be stirred constantly to prevent lumps and scorching on the bottom of the saucepan.

“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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