Name: Raspberry Shortcake
Ingredients: short-paste or puff-paste; ripe raspberries; sugar; cream

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Raspberry Shortcake

Ingredients

short-paste or puff-paste
ripe raspberries
sugar
cream

Directions

Prepare

Bake short-paste or puff-paste cakes about ½ inch thick on plates.

Assemble and serve

Split the cakes open and spread ripe raspberries and sugar between the layers and on top.
Serve with 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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Short-paste or puff-paste: Forms the baked cake layers that hold the fruit and cream.
Ripe raspberries: Provide the main fruit flavour and juiciness that moisten the layers.
Sugar: Sweetens the raspberries and helps draw out their juice.
Cream: Adds richness and a cool, soft texture against the baked cakes.

“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.