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 ↓
Strawberries
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the berries
Select the best strawberries and do not wash them.
Pile the berries in a fruit dish in the shape of a hill.
Sprinkle plenty of powdered sugar over the berries.
Make the cream
Mash half a cup of the berries to a pulp, sweeten, and strain.
Gradually pour sweet cream into the juice while stirring constantly.
Pour the cream mixture over the berries just before serving.
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
- Strawberries
- Provide the main fruit flavor, juice and structure of the dish.
- Sweet cream
- Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture to the strawberry juice.
- Pulverized sugar
- Sweetens the berries and balances the tartness of the fruit.
The step that matters
Gradually pour sweet cream into the juice while stirring constantly. Adding cream slowly while stirring keeps it evenly blended. Pouring it in too fast can cause the cream to curdle or separate when it meets the acidic strawberry juice.
“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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