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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A cake made with flour, strawberries, baking powder, butter, milk, sugar, and sour milk, baked in pie tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson." · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine one quart flour, two heaping teaspoonsful of Royal Baking Powder, half a teaspoon of salt, butter the size of an egg, a little milk, and two quarts of strawberries.

  2. Mix the baking powder into the flour, then rub in the butter till it is a stiff smooth paste.

  3. Add enough milk to make a soft dough — rather softer than for biscuits.

Bake and serve

  1. Spread this on two pie tins and bake quickly.

  2. When partly cool, split them open, and spread them with butter and strawberries plentifully mixed with sugar.

  3. Serve with cream.

Variations

  1. This can be made with sour milk as follows: To two teacupsful of sour milk, add one teaspoonful of soda, then three-quarters of a teacup of butter or lard partly melted, and enough flour to make a soft dough.

  2. These cakes can be made in the same way with currants, blackberries, cut peaches, chopped pineapples, or raspberries.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

882Calories
28 gProtein
26 gFat
132 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Sour Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Strawberry1 cup (152g)49
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Pienot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson.". 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. See the original page.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 cakes as it sets around the baking powder gas.
Butter
Is rubbed into the flour to make the dough tender and rich.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cakes rise and become light.
Strawberries
Add moisture, fruit flavour and sweetness to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and draws out their juice.

The step that matters

Bake quickly. A hot, quick bake sets the soft dough and lets the baking powder lift it before the gas escapes, giving a light, tender cake rather than a dense one.

“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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