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Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A light cake made with flour, butter, baking powder, salt, egg white, cold milk, topped with sugared strawberries and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Strawberry Short-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour.

  3. Add the baking powder and salt to the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg white until stiff and mix with enough cold milk to form a dough that is stiff enough to roll out.

  5. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into cakes.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the cakes on pie tins until golden.

  2. Once baked, cut around the edges and split the cakes.

  3. Layer well-sugared strawberries between the split cakes.

  4. Sift powdered sugar over the top and pour beaten cream around if desired.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the crumb and add richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cakes rise and become light.
Egg white
Beaten until stiff, it adds lift and helps bind the dough.

The step that matters

Rubbing the butter into the flour. If the butter becomes soft or melts, it coats the flour unevenly and the cakes turn dense rather than short and crumbly. Keeping the butter cool and working it in lightly keeps the layers tender.

“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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