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Dessert

Shredded Wheat Biscuit and Strawberry Meringue

A dessert of shredded wheat biscuits topped with strawberries and meringue, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Shredded Wheat Biscuit and Strawberry Meringue

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Pick over the strawberries and place them in a bowl with sugar. Let sit for 1 hour.

Assemble the base

  1. Carefully divide the shredded wheat biscuits in half and heat them in a pan in the oven.

  2. Lightly butter the biscuits and moisten them with strawberry juice.

  3. Place them in a baking dish.

  4. Add the strawberries on top, cover, and return to the oven for 5 minutes.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar.

  3. Spread the meringue on top of the strawberries.

  4. Place the dish in an open oven for 2 minutes to brown the meringue.

  5. Serve with cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Wheat + biscuittop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Strawberry + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Strawberries
Provide the fruit and juice that moisten the biscuits and form the filling.
Egg whites
Whip into a foam that sets into the meringue topping and browns in the oven.
Shredded wheat biscuits
Form the absorbent base that soaks up strawberry juice and butter.
Powdered sugar
Stabilizes the whipped egg whites and sweetens the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Browning the meringue. Two minutes in an open oven is brief, and meringue can go from pale to scorched quickly. Watch it closely, since the sugar caramelizes fast at high heat while the centre stays soft.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, wheat, biscuit, butter, egg, cream. 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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