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Dessert

Strawberry Cream

A chilled strawberry gelatin dessert made with cream, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Soak the gelatine in cold water or milk for 2 hours.

  2. Pick the strawberries.

  3. Place the strawberries in a bowl with ¾ lb. of castor sugar.

  4. After 10 minutes, strain the mixture through a fine sieve.

  5. Add the juice of 1 lemon to the strawberry puree.

  6. Dissolve the gelatine in a small saucepan over low heat.

  7. Combine the puree and dissolved gelatine in another saucepan.

  8. When the gelatine is nearly cool, strain it into the strawberry puree.

Make the cream

  1. Whip the cream until soft peaks form.

  2. Gently fold the whipped cream into the puree.

  3. Surround the saucepan with ice and stir until the mixture begins to freeze.

  4. Remove the saucepan from the ice.

Mould and set

  1. Fill a cylinder mold (not tin) with the mixture.

  2. Place the mold in a basin surrounded by crushed ice.

  3. Cover the top with a lid and pack ice on top; let it set for about 2 hours.

Unmould and serve

  1. Prepare a basin of hot water.

  2. Dip the mold into the hot water briefly.

  3. Quickly invert the mold onto a dish.

  4. If it doesn't release, dip it again in hot water.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Cream + lemontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,640 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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, colour and bulk of the cream.
Cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when whipped and folded in.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when unmoulded.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the fruit and draws out its juices to make a puree.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the strawberry flavour.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped cream into the puree. Gentle folding keeps the air in the whipped cream, so the set dessert stays light; stirring hard deflates the foam and makes it dense.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar. 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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