Name: Strawberry Short-cake
Ingredients: baking powder biscuit dough; soft butter; 1 quart strawberries, prepared with sugar; sweet cream for serving

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 Short-cake

Ingredients

baking powder biscuit dough
soft butter
1 quart strawberries, prepared with sugar
sweet cream for serving

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

Prepare baking powder biscuit dough with extra shortening.
Divide the dough in half.
Roll each piece to fit a biscuit tin or large pie tin.

Assemble and bake

Spread soft butter on the bottom crust.
Place the top crust on it.
Repeat with the second half of the dough.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

Serve

Once baked, separate the layers where the butter was spread.
Place the bottom crusts on plates.
Cover with prepared strawberries.
Pour any remaining juice around the cake.
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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Biscuit + creamtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,235 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,009 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,874 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Baking powder biscuit dough: Forms the tender, layered crusts that hold the berries and cream.
Soft butter: Spread between the crusts, it separates the layers and adds richness.
Strawberries: Provide sweetness and acidity, and their juice moistens the crusts.
Sweet cream: Adds richness and cooling contrast to the warm, tart berries.

“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.