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Dessert

Sweet Strawberry Cake

A layered cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, butter, baking powder, strawberries, and meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Sweet Strawberry Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then stir into the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into a deep tin plate and bake until golden.

Fill and top

  1. In a bowl, mix the strawberries with 1 cup of sugar and mash slightly.

  2. Spread the strawberry mixture between the layers of cake.

  3. For the top layer, beat the egg white and mix with powdered sugar to make meringue.

  4. Spread the meringue over the top layer and arrange the largest strawberries in circles on top.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the cake crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and turns light.
Strawberries
Add moisture, fruity flavour and acidity to the filling and top.
Egg white
Whipped with powdered sugar to form the meringue topping.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white into meringue. Egg white must be whipped until it holds stiff peaks; under-whipped or greasy whites will not hold the meringue shape on top of the cake.

“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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