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Dessert

Strawberry Cream

A chilled dessert made from mashed strawberries, sugar, corn starch, egg yolks, and folded egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and egg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 122,807 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the juice

  1. Mash the hulled strawberries in a porcelain kettle and boil for 2 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture through a linen cloth and measure the juice.

Make the cream

  1. In a porcelain saucepan, combine the juice and sugar, then place it over boiling water.

  2. Mix the corn starch with a little cold juice or water and stir it in; cook until it boils for 2 minutes.

  3. Beat the yolks with a little cold juice and stir them in, cooking until thickened but do not let it boil.

  4. Remove from heat and cool for 5 minutes before adding the egg whites.

  5. Beat the egg whites with 1 tablespoon of sugar until stiff, then fold them in gradually.

  6. Mix well and refrigerate until cool, then serve on ice.

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 + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Sugar + corntop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,168 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Corn + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,484 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks thicken the custard and whites, whipped and folded in, lighten the texture.
Corn starch
Thickens the strawberry juice as it boils, giving the cream body.
Strawberries
Supply the main flavor and juice that forms the base of the cream.
White granulated sugar
Sweetens the juice and helps stabilize the whipped egg whites.

The step that matters

Cooking the yolks without boiling. Egg yolks thicken at temperatures just above boiling water, but if they boil they can curdle and turn grainy. Heat gently and stir constantly until the mixture coats a spoon.

“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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