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Dessert

Creme De Fraises

A chilled strawberry custard made by mixing mashed strawberries with a reduced cream‑milk mixture and setting with rennet.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Creme De Fraises

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

  1. Wash the strawberries.

  2. Drain the strawberries.

  3. Mash the strawberries in a marble mortar.

Make the cream

  1. Boil 1 quart of cream with 1 quart of milk, sweetened to taste, until it reduces by half.

  2. Let the mixture cool.

  3. Mix in the mashed strawberries and a small amount of rennet.

  4. When the milk is lukewarm, pass it through a fine sieve into a heatproof pan.

Set and chill

  1. Place the pan on warm cinders until it sets.

  2. Cool it in a cool place or on ice until serving.

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

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

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

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

Milk and sugar 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

Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, creamy body to the finished dessert.
Milk
Forms the liquid base whose proteins set into a soft, sliceable custard.
Rennet
Enzyme that clots the milk proteins so the mixture sets into a soft curd.
Strawberries (in the method)
Provide the main fruit flavour, aroma and pink colour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cream and balances the tartness of the strawberries.

The step that matters

Add the rennet when the milk is lukewarm. Rennet is an enzyme that clots milk proteins and works best at lukewarm temperatures. If the mixture is too hot, the enzyme can be weakened or the set can turn grainy, and if it is too cold the milk will set slowly or unevenly.

“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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