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 Bavarian Cream
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the strawberry base
Pick over the strawberries, mash them well, and strain through a colander to extract the juice.
Add the sugar to the strawberry juice.
Soak the gelatine in the cold water until dissolved, then mix it with the strawberry juice.
Make the cream and set
Whip the cream until light and drain it on a sieve; keep it cool until needed.
Chill the strawberry juice and gelatine mixture until it begins to set, then gently fold in the whipped cream.
Line a mold with whole strawberries, fill it with the cream mixture, and chill until firm.
Serve
Unmold the cream when ready to serve and garnish with fresh strawberries.
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
- Gelatine
- Sets the strawberry mixture so the cream holds its shape when unmolded.
- Cream
- Whipped into air, it gives the dessert a light, rich, creamy texture.
- Strawberries
- Provide the main flavour and colour, and their juice gives the base its liquid.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the strawberry juice and balances its natural tartness.
The step that matters
Folding the whipped cream into the setting mixture. The gelatine mixture must be only partly set, not firm. If it is too cold or too thick, the cream will not blend evenly and the dessert may be lumpy. Folding gently keeps the whipped air in the cream so the texture stays light.
“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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