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Dessert

Cream Strawberries

A chilled dessert of strawberries folded into whipped cream, sweetened and set with isinglass.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar 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 ↓

Cream Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the strawberries through a fine sieve.

  2. Boil the isinglass in a small quantity of water or milk.

  3. Strain the boiled isinglass.

  4. Let the strained isinglass cool without setting.

Make the cream

  1. In a large basin, whip the cream until it begins to thicken.

  2. Whip in the lemon and sifted sugar.

  3. Add the strawberries and more sugar if needed.

  4. Gently whip in the isinglass until well combined.

  5. If the mixture is nearly set, pour it into a mold.

  6. If the color is not like that of a strawberry, add cochineal coloring.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Lemon and sugar 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 flavor and pink color of the cream.
Isinglass
Sets the cream into a soft, wobbly structure as it cools.
Cream
Forms the rich, light body that the whipped mixture is built on.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the tartness of the lemon and strawberries.

The step that matters

Gently whip in the isinglass. Isinglass must be cool but still liquid, or it sets in lumps. Folding it in gently keeps the whipped cream airy and evenly set as it chills.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, 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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