Name: Strawberries Preserved in Wine
Ingredients: very large strawberries; 3 tablespoons fine sugar; Maderia or good sherry

Why it works: Sugar and sherry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,141 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberries Preserved in Wine

Ingredients

very large strawberries
3 tablespoons fine sugar
Maderia or good sherry

Directions

Place the strawberries in a clean glass bottle.
Sprinkle the sugar over the strawberries.
Fill the bottle with Maderia or good sherry.

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.

Sugar + sherrytop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together4,141 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Very large strawberries: Provide the fruit that softens and flavours the preserve.
Fine sugar: Sweetens the fruit and helps draw out juices to mix with the spirit.
Maderia or good sherry: Fills the bottle as the liquid that preserves the fruit and adds aroma.

“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.