Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Mousse

A frozen dessert of mashed strawberries, sugar, gelatin and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Gelatin and cream match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Strawberry Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak gelatin in cold water for 2 hours.

  2. Mash strawberries and mix with sugar; let sit for 2 hours.

Make the mousse

  1. Dissolve gelatin in boiling water, stirring until fully dissolved.

  2. Strain sweetened strawberries, then mix in dissolved gelatin.

  3. Place the bowl in a pan of ice water and stir until it begins to thicken.

  4. Fold in whipped cream until well combined.

Freeze

  1. Pour mixture into a freezer and pack with ice for 6 hours.

  2. Remove dasher from freezer without turning it.

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. Gelatin + creamtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Gelatin + sugartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Gelatin
Sets the mousse so it holds its shape after chilling.
Strawberries
Provide the main flavour, colour and moisture of the mousse.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and balances their tartness.
Heavy cream
Adds richness and a light, airy texture when folded in.

The step that matters

Chilling the gelatin mixture in ice water. Gelatin sets as it cools. Stop stirring once the mixture just begins to thicken, otherwise it can set in lumps or become too stiff to fold the cream in smoothly, leaving the mousse dense.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes