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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A shortcake made with butter, lard, flour, and water, topped with strawberries, powdered sugar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 Shortcake

Ingredients

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the flour and lard, rubbing them together until crumbly.

  3. Cut the cold butter into small pieces and mix it into the flour mixture with a knife.

  4. Add the cold water and mix until a dough forms.

  5. Roll out the dough and divide it into two oblong shapes.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

  2. Once baked, layer the cakes with strawberries and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  3. Top with whipped cream and additional strawberries, also sprinkled with sugar.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Cold butter
Cut into small pieces, it creates flaky layers as it melts in the oven.
Lard
Rubbed into the flour, it tenderizes the crumb and keeps the cakes short.
Cold water
Brings the flour and fats together into a cohesive dough.
Heavy cream
Whipped to a topping that adds richness and a soft, light texture.

The step that matters

Keep the butter and lard cold while mixing. Cold fat stays in solid pieces that melt during baking and leave pockets of steam, giving flaky layers. If the fat softens and blends into the flour, the cakes turn dense and 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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