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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake III

A layered cake made with flour, butter, milk, strawberries, and sugar, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 III

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Add butter and work it in with your hands.

  4. Slowly add milk, wetting small portions until the dough is sticky.

  5. Divide the dough in two and roll one half on a floured surface to fit a round cake tin.

  6. Brush the rolled dough with melted butter.

  7. Roll out the second half and place it on top of the first layer.

  8. Brush the top with milk and bake for 20 minutes.

Prepare the strawberries

  1. While the cake bakes, crush the strawberries and mix with sugar.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once baked, split the cake in half and butter the inner surfaces.

  2. Spread the lower layer with crushed strawberries, then invert the top layer with the soft side up.

  3. Heap the remaining strawberries on top and serve immediately.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 gluten structure that gives the shortcake its body and crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the shortcake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and browns the surface.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough comes together and stays moist.
Strawberries
Supply moisture, tartness and fresh flavor that balance the sweet, rich cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and draws out their juices into a syrup.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the dough. Adding milk slowly in small portions lets the flour absorb it evenly. Too much liquid at once makes the dough sticky and tough, while too little leaves the shortcake dry and crumbly.

“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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