Why it works: Sugar and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 98,233 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓
Strawberry Pudding Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until smooth. Add the strawberries and mix well.
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.
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together98,233 recipes
Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- White sugar
- Sweetens the sauce and helps cream with the butter to give a smooth texture.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky body.
- Strawberries
- Provide fruity flavour, aroma and moisture to the sauce.
The step that matters
Creaming the sugar and butter until smooth. Beating sugar into butter traps air and dissolves sugar grains, so the mixture becomes smooth rather than grainy. Starting with properly softened butter makes this much easier.
“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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