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Dessert

Strawberries Whole

Whole strawberries are sugared and simmered in a currant juice syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and red currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,156 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberries Whole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the strawberries in a large dish and sprinkle the sugar evenly over them, then gently shake the dish to ensure the sugar reaches the underside of the strawberries.

  2. Use only the largest, not overripe strawberries.

Make the syrup and cook

  1. Combine the remaining sugar with the red currant juice in a saucepan to make a thin syrup.

  2. Simmer the strawberries in the syrup until they are sufficiently jellied.

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 + red curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,156 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

Strawberries
Provide the fruit that is cooked whole and set in the jellied syrup.
Double refined sugar
Sweetens the fruit and syrup and draws moisture out of the berries.
Red currant juice
Forms the base of the syrup and adds tartness and flavour.

The step that matters

Simmer the strawberries until sufficiently jellied. Pectin in the fruit and sugar together set the syrup; too little cooking leaves it runny, while overcooking can toughen the berries and make the syrup too stiff.

“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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