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Strawberry Sponge

A gelatin-based strawberry sponge made with strawberry juice, egg whites, and fresh strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,060 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the gelatine

  1. Soak the gelatine in the cold water for 30 minutes.

  2. Pour the boiling water over the gelatine, add sugar, and stir until dissolved.

  3. Add the strawberry juice and strain the mixture.

  4. Place the mixture on ice, stirring occasionally until it thickens.

Fold and set

  1. Beat the mixture well with an egg beater, then fold in the stiffly beaten egg whites until smooth.

  2. Gently fold in the quartered strawberries.

  3. Pour the mixture into a mold and chill until set.

Serve

  1. Serve with a custard sauce made from the egg yolks.

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 + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

  3. Strawberry + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,509 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Gelatine
Sets the liquid into a wobbly, sliceable structure as it cools.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam to lighten the mixture and give it an airy, sponge-like texture.
Strawberry juice
Provides the main strawberry flavour and liquid for the set mixture.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and helps balance the tartness of the strawberries.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Stiffly beaten whites hold the air that makes the sponge light. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously or letting the gelatine mixture get too cold and thick before folding can deflate the foam or leave lumps.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Strawberrythe original

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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