Name: Strawberry Dessert
Ingredients: 1 quart strawberries; ½ cup powdered sugar; juice of 2 oranges; ½ cup claret

Why it works: Sugar and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,212 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Strawberry Dessert

Ingredients

1 quart strawberries
½ cup powdered sugar
juice of 2 oranges
½ cup claret

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

Wash and strain the strawberries.
Place the strawberries in a glass bowl and cover them with powdered sugar.

Add the liquid and chill

Pour the orange juice and claret over the strawberries.
Let the mixture stand in ice water until served.

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 + 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

Strawberries: Provide the main fruit flavor and the bulk of the dessert.
Powdered sugar: Adds sweetness and draws juice out of the strawberries as they stand.
Orange juice: Adds acidity and brightness that balance the sweetness.
Claret: Adds wine flavor and aroma to the fruit.

“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.