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Dessert

Strawberry Mousse

A chilled dessert made from strawberries, sugar, gelatin, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and gelatin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,778 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Strawberry Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Wash and hull the strawberries, then sprinkle with sugar and let stand for one hour.

  2. Mash the strawberries and rub them through a fine sieve.

Make the mousse

  1. Soak the gelatin in cold water, then dissolve it in hot water.

  2. Set the mixture in a pan of ice water and stir until it begins to thicken.

  3. Fold in the whipped cream.

  4. Pour into a mold, cover, and pack in ice and salt for four hours.

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 + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the main flavor and pulp that gives the mousse its body.
Gelatin
Sets the strawberry purée into a soft, sliceable structure as it cools.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out juice while it stands.

The step that matters

Set the mixture in a pan of ice water and stir until it begins to thicken. Gelatin sets only as it cools, so the mixture must thicken to a syrupy stage before folding in the cream. If it sets fully in the pan, lumps form; if it is still too thin, the cream will deflate and the mousse will not hold its shape.

“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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