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Dessert

Bina's Strawberry Shortcake

A layered shortcake made from flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, milk, baked and topped with strawberries, sugar, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Women of the First Congregational Church (Marysville, Ohio) · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bina's Strawberry Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift two heaping teaspoons baking powder into two quarts of flour. Add a scant half teacup butter, two tablespoons sugar, a little salt, and enough sweet milk (or water) to make a soft dough; mix with a knife or spoon.

  2. Roll out the dough almost as thin as a pie crust. Place each layer in a baking pan, spread a very little butter on the pan, and sprinkle some flour.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the four layers in a pan fourteen inches by seven for about fifteen minutes in a quick oven.

  2. Turn the cake upside down, remove the top layer (the bottom when baking), and place it on a dish to serve.

  3. Spread plentifully with strawberries (not mashed) previously sweetened with pulverized sugar. Place layer upon layer, treating each one the same way.

Serve

  1. Serve the warm cake with sugar and cream.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

606Calories
13 gProtein
13 gFat
108 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

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

By Women of the First Congregational Church (Marysville, Ohio). 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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 layers once baked.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the layers rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and the strawberries.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Dough rolled almost as thin as a pie crust bakes quickly and evenly, so the layers cook through without drying out. Thicker dough would need a longer bake and could turn out dense.

“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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