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Dessert

Strawberry Float

A custard dessert layered with crushed strawberries and frothy egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Strawberry Float

Why it works: Egg and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 18% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 88,785 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Float

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Crush the strawberries with ½ cup of sugar.

Make the custard

  1. Make a custard by cooking the yolks of the eggs with 1 pint of milk and ½ cup of sugar until thick.

  2. Pour the custard into a fancy dish and let it cool.

Make the frosting and assemble

  1. Beat the egg whites to a stiff froth, gradually adding ½ cup of sugar and the strained juice of the berries until it holds peaks.

  2. Layer the crushed strawberries on top of the custard.

  3. Spread the frosting on top in peaks.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and milk 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

Egg whites
Whipped into a stiff foam that forms the light, airy frosting topping.
Egg yolks
Thicken the milk into a custard as they cook and set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that is thickened by the yolks.
Strawberries
Provide fruit flavour and juice, and are layered over the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard, strawberries and frosting, and helps stabilise the whipped whites.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites to a stiff froth. Whites must be beaten until they hold firm peaks, and sugar is added gradually so the foam stays stable. Under-beaten or greasy whites will collapse and weep, leaving a runny frosting.

“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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