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Dessert

Strawberry Tea Cake

A layered cake with strawberry filling, made with eggs, sugar, butter, milk, flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and fresh strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Tea Cake

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. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  3. Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda, then add to the wet mixture.

Bake and fill

  1. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

  2. For the filling, beat the reserved egg white until stiff. Gradually add ¾ cup sugar, beating until well combined.

  3. Fold in the bruised strawberries until the mixture is stiff enough to stand alone.

  4. Spread the filling between the layers of cake.

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whipped white helps the strawberry filling hold its shape.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to add tenderness and fat to the crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once the batter sets in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the whipped egg white and reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Strawberries
Add moisture, fruity flavor, and acidity to the filling.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white until stiff. Egg white under-beaten stays loose and won't hold air, so the filling collapses; over-beaten it turns dry and grainy. Beat until it forms firm peaks before adding sugar gradually.

“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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