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Compote of Strawberries

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Syrup and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Compote of Strawberries

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Remove the stalks from the strawberries.

  2. Drop the strawberries one by one into the syrup and let them simmer.

  3. Pour the strawberries into a basin and let them cool.

  4. Arrange the strawberries in a compote dish in the shape of a cone.

  5. Pour the syrup around the strawberries and serve.

  6. Pick out a third of the best strawberries and place them in a glass dish.

  7. Strew the selected strawberries with crushed sugar and keep them cool.

  8. Mash the remaining strawberries with sugar and lemon juice.

  9. Mix the strawberry pulp with white wine and strain it over the whole strawberries.

  10. Serve the compote with sweet biscuits.

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. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Lemon + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Lemon + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together697 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Sugar + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, sugar, white wine, biscuit):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Apricotfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Pearfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, sugar, white wine, biscuit. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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