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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked biscuit-like cake layered with strawberries and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Strawberry Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the salt with the flour.

  2. Chop in the butter.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and add it to the sour cream or buttermilk along with the sugar.

  4. Combine all ingredients, handling as little as possible, until the mixture is soft enough to roll.

  5. Roll out into two sheets and bake in well-greased round tins.

  6. Once baked, separate the layers where they joined.

Assemble and serve

  1. Lightly heat and crush the strawberries before placing them between the crusts.

  2. Place a thick layer of strawberries on the lower sheet and dust with powdered sugar.

  3. Optionally, add more strawberries on top and sugar them as well.

  4. Serve with sweet cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the shortcake crust.
Butter
Chopped in to add richness and a tender, flaky texture.
Sour cream or rich buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that works with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream or buttermilk to make the dough rise.
Strawberries
Provide the fruit flavour and juicy filling between the layers.

The step that matters

Combine all ingredients, handling as little as possible. Overworking the dough develops gluten, making the shortcake tough instead of tender. Mixing only until the dough is soft enough to roll keeps the crumb short.

“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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