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Dessert

Strawberry Cream

A chilled strawberry dessert made by crushing strawberries, sieving the pulp, and mixing with milk and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 strawberries

  1. Remove the stems from the strawberries and crush them slightly.

  2. Cover the strawberries with powdered sugar and let them stand for 3-4 hours.

  3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve to extract the pulp.

Make the cream

  1. In a separate bowl, stir together the milk and cream, then sweeten slightly and warm.

  2. Stir in the strawberry pulp and whisk the mixture until combined.

  3. Fill small china or glass cups with the mixture and serve on a napkin if needed.

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

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

  2. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

Strawberries
Provide the main flavour and pulp that gives the cream its fruity character and colour.
Powdered sugar
Draws juice out of the strawberries and sweetens the fruit while it stands.
Milk
Thins the cream base and dilutes the richness for a lighter texture.
Cream
Adds fat, giving the finished mixture a smooth, rich body.

The step that matters

Rub the mixture through a fine sieve. Pressing the macerated strawberries through a fine sieve separates the pulp from seeds and fibres, so the finished cream is smooth rather than gritty.

“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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