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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, eggs, and milk, topped with strawberries and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 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.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Sift the flour and baking powder together.

  3. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Add the sugar and eggs.

  5. Mix in enough milk to form a soft dough.

  6. Roll out the dough.

  7. Place the rolled dough in a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Let the cake cool.

  3. Top with fresh strawberries and whipped cream before serving.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture forms a soft, workable dough.

The step that matters

Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Keeping the butter in small cold pieces coats the flour and limits gluten development, which keeps the cake tender rather than tough.

“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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