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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, baking soda, salt, butter or lard, sour cream, and sweet milk, topped with strawberries and sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Short Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and salt.

  3. Rub in the butter or lard until well combined.

  4. Add the sour cream and enough sweet milk to form a soft dough.

  5. Mix the dough lightly, avoiding excessive kneading.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until done.

  2. Split the cake.

  3. Spread with sweet butter.

  4. Sugar the strawberries.

  5. Layer the strawberries between the cake halves.

  6. Serve with sweetened 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.

  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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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 cake once mixed with liquid.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to lift the dough as it bakes.
Butter or lard
Rubbed into the flour to give the cake a tender, crumbly texture.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, tenderising the crumb and activating the baking soda.

The step that matters

Mix the dough lightly, avoiding excessive kneading.. Overworking wheat flour dough develops gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense rather than tender and light.

“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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