Why it works: Sugar and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23,364 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓
Preserved Strawberries
Ingredients
Directions
Boil the sugar and strawberries together for 8 minutes.
Add the alum and boil for 7 minutes longer.
Remove the strawberries and let the juice boil for an additional 5 minutes.
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 + nutmegtop 20% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together23,364 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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 fruit that is preserved, supplying flavor, color and bulk.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the fruit and, at this quantity, helps preserve it and thicken the syrup.
- Alum
- Firms the fruit tissue so the berries hold their shape during long boiling.
The step that matters
Removing the strawberries before the final boil. Boiling the juice alone concentrates the syrup without overcooking the fruit. Leaving the berries in would let them break down and turn the syrup cloudy and mushy.
“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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