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Dessert

Strawberry Sponge

A gelatin dessert made with strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup of water for 2 hours.

  2. Mash the strawberries.

  3. Mix in ½ cup of sugar.

  4. Rub the strawberries through a sieve.

Make the syrup

  1. Boil the remaining sugar and water gently for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the gelatine to the boiling syrup.

  3. Remove from heat.

  4. Mix in the strawberries.

Whip and set

  1. Place the mixture in a pan of ice water.

  2. Beat for 5 minutes.

  3. Add the egg whites.

  4. Beat until the mixture begins to thicken.

  5. Pour into molds.

  6. Refrigerate to harden.

  7. Serve with sugar and 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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

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

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

Sugar and lemon 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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavour and colour, and their pulp adds body to the sponge.
Gelatine
Sets the liquid mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Egg whites
Trap air when beaten, creating the light, airy foam texture of the sponge.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps stabilise the whipped foam.

The step that matters

Beat until the mixture begins to thicken. The mixture must be cold and only partly thickened before molds are filled. If it is over-beaten or left too long in the ice water, the gelatine sets before the mixture can be poured, and the sponge loses its airy texture.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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