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Strawberry Syrup

A sweet syrup made from sugar and strawberry juice, optionally flavored with orange juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Strawberry and orange work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 726 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Strawberry Syrup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the syrup

  1. Combine the sugar and strawberry juice in a bain-marie.

  2. Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved.

  3. Remove any foam that forms on the surface.

Bottle

  1. For enhanced flavor, add orange juice before bottling.

  2. Bottle the syrup.

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. Strawberry + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together726 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Sugar + strawberrytop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Sugar
Provides sweetness and body, dissolving into the juice to form a thick syrup.
Strawberry juice
Supplies the main strawberry flavor and most of the liquid.
Orange juice
Adds brightness and acidity that sharpens the strawberry flavor.

The step that matters

Stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Undissolved sugar can settle or recrystallize in the bottled syrup, leaving a grainy texture. Full dissolving gives a smooth, evenly sweet syrup.

Swap the orange

The recipe marks orange as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, strawberry):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Pineapplefits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, strawberry. 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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