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Strawberry Mould

A chilled strawberry pudding made by boiling milk and mixing with strawberry pudding powder and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Strawberry Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the pudding powder smoothly with a little cold milk.

  2. Boil the remaining milk.

  3. Add the blended milk and pudding powder to the boiling milk and stir until boiling.

  4. Add the butter and sweeten to taste.

  5. Boil gently for about 5 minutes.

Set

  1. Turn the mixture into a wetted mold and set aside until cold.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Strawberry + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,130 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Strawberry + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

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

  4. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Pudding powder
Thickens the milk and gives the mould its strawberry flavour and set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the pudding powder thickens into a creamy set.
Butter
Adds richness and a smoother mouthfeel to the finished mould.

The step that matters

Mixing the powder with cold milk before heating. Starch granules clump when they meet hot liquid unless they are first dispersed in cold liquid. A smooth paste at the start ensures an even, lump-free thickened set.

Swap the strawberry

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Peachfits about as well
  4. Strawberrythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, butter, 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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