Name: Strawberries and Cream
Ingredients: fresh strawberries; sugar; heavy cream

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 and Cream

Ingredients

fresh strawberries
sugar
heavy cream

Directions

Prepare

Remove the caps from the strawberries without washing them.
Place the strawberries in a glass bowl.

Serve

Serve with sugar and heavy cream on the side.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked 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

Fresh strawberries: Provide the fruit's juicy flesh and sweet, bright flavor as the main component.
Sugar: Adds sweetness to balance the tartness of the strawberries.
Heavy cream: Adds richness and a smooth, creamy texture that contrasts with the fruit.

“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.