Name: Strawberry Actd
Ingredients: 5 oz tartaric acid; 1 pint water; 12 lbs sugar; 12 quarts strawberry juice

Why it works: Sugar and strawberry are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,060 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Actd

Ingredients

5 oz tartaric acid
1 pint water
12 lbs sugar
12 quarts strawberry juice

Directions

Make the syrup

Dissolve tartaric acid in water.
Pour the mixture over the sugar.
Let it stand for 24 hours.
Add the strawberry juice.

Bottle

Bottle the mixture.

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 + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,060 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

Tartaric acid: Adds sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the syrup.
Sugar: Provides sweetness and body, and helps preserve the syrup.
Strawberry juice: Supplies the main strawberry flavour and liquid volume of the syrup.

“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.