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Dessert

Strawberry Cream

A chilled dessert made with strawberries, gelatin, milk, sugar, lemon juice, and whipped cream.

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 fruit

  1. Sprinkle sugar over fresh strawberries and let sit for 1-2 hours to release juice.

  2. If strawberries are hard, gently stew them.

Make the base

  1. Soak gelatin in 1 cup of milk for 1 hour.

  2. Dissolve jelly in a pot, boil with 1 ounce of sugar, and add soaked gelatin.

Whip and combine

  1. In a bowl, whisk ½ pint of cream in a cool place until it thickens, then stop immediately to prevent curdling.

  2. Combine the whipped cream with the strawberry mixture and serve.

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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  3. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cream
Whips into a light, airy texture that gives the dessert its body.
Gelatine
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when chilled.
Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour and sweetness after macerating with sugar.
Milk
Hydrates the gelatine and adds richness to the base.
Sugar
Sweetens the dish and draws juice out of the strawberries.

The step that matters

Stop whisking the cream as soon as it thickens. Cream over-whipped past soft peaks begins to separate into butter and liquid, becoming grainy and curdled, so it must be stopped at the first sign of thickening.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, milk, 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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