Skip to main content
Dessert

Rich Strawberry Shortcake

A layered cake made with flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, nutmeg, egg, butter, milk, topped with strawberries, sugar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Rich Strawberry Shortcake

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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and nutmeg in a bowl.

  3. Add the beaten egg and milk, and mix thoroughly.

Bake and assemble

  1. In two shallow tins, pour the batter and bake until done.

  2. Once cooled, place one cake on a plate, layer with strawberries mixed with sugar, and top with the second cake.

  3. Spread whipped cream on top and garnish with whole fresh berries.

  4. Serve with crushed berry juice mixed with sugar as a sauce.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the cakes rise.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the batter set and bind.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour in the crumb.
Milk
Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown lightly as it bakes.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, butter, milk, cream):

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, butter, milk, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

More strawberry shortcake recipes

Sauce 6 See all 339 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes