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Dessert

Strawberry Sponge

A gelatin-based strawberry dessert made with strawberries, gelatin, sugar, lemon juice, and whipped egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Sponge

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberry base

  1. Soak the gelatine in ½ cup of water.

  2. Mash the strawberries and mix in ½ cup of sugar until dissolved, then press through a sieve.

  3. Boil the remaining sugar and water together for 15 minutes.

  4. Add the soaked gelatine to the boiling syrup, remove from heat, and stir in the strawberry puree.

Set and serve

  1. Place the mixture in a bowl set in cold water and beat for 5 minutes until cool and slightly thickened.

  2. Fold in the whipped egg whites and beat until the mixture thickens considerably.

  3. Pour the sponge into a mold and refrigerate until hardened.

  4. Serve with cream and sugar.

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

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

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

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

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavour and colour, and the puree that gives body to the sponge.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Egg whites
Whipped to foam, they lighten the mixture and give the sponge its airy texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and helps balance the tartness of the strawberries.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture until it thickens before folding in the egg whites. The mixture must be cool and slightly thickened so the whipped egg whites keep their air when folded in. If it is still warm and runny, the foam collapses and the sponge will be dense rather than light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar. 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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