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Dessert

Frozen Strawberries

A frozen dessert made from strawberries, sugar, lemon juice, water, and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Frozen Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fruit

  1. Juice the lemons.

  2. In a bowl, combine strawberries, lemon juice, and sugar; let stand for 1 hour.

Make and freeze

  1. Mash the berries, then add water and stir until the sugar is dissolved.

  2. When the mixture is nearly frozen, add the beaten egg white and freeze slowly.

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. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and lemon 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 flavour and fruit body of the dessert.
Sugar
Sweetens the mixture and softens the texture by lowering the freezing point.
Egg white
Whipped into the nearly frozen mixture to add air and a lighter, smoother texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour and balances the sugar.

The step that matters

Add the egg white when the mixture is nearly frozen. If the mixture is fully frozen, the beaten egg white cannot blend in evenly and won't give the airy texture. Adding it near freezing keeps the mixture slushy enough to incorporate air, and slow freezing keeps ice crystals small.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Datesfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg. 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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