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Dessert

Strawberry Ijessert

A baked dessert layering strawberries and macaroons with an egg yolk mixture and sweetened egg whites, served cold with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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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 ↓

Strawberry Ijessert

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a dish with macaroons and wet them with wine.

  2. Add the strawberries and sprinkle with sugar.

Make the custard

  1. Beat the egg yolks with sugar, lemon peel, and lemon juice.

  2. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Fold in half of the yolk mixture.

  4. Pour the mixture over the strawberries in the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until light brown.

  2. Spread the remaining sweetened egg whites on top.

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

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

  2. Wine + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

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

  5. Wine + creamtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

Macaroons
Form the base layer and soak up wine, giving a soft, moist foundation.
Strawberries
Provide the fruit layer, adding moisture and fresh flavor under the custard.
Egg yolks
Thicken and enrich the custard as they set during baking.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they add lightness and form a browning topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the fruit and custard and helps stabilize the beaten egg whites.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that balances the sweetness of the custard and fruit.

The step that matters

Fold in half of the yolk mixture. Folding gently preserves the air trapped in the beaten egg whites. Stirring or deflating them makes the custard dense rather than light and tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits about as well
  3. Raspberryfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against wine, sugar, egg, cream. 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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