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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A light cake made with flour, butter, baking soda, sour cream, and topped with strawberries and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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.

Make the dough

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

  2. Mix the salt with the flour and chop in the butter.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and add it with the beaten egg to the sour cream or milk and sugar.

  4. Combine all ingredients, handling as little as possible, and mix until soft enough to roll.

Bake and assemble

  1. Roll out into two sheets and bake in well-greased round tins.

  2. Once baked, separate the layers where they joined.

  3. Place a thick layer of strawberries on the lower sheet and dust with powdered sugar.

  4. Optionally, add more strawberries on top and sugar them as well.

  5. Serve with sweet 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 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. 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 shortcake as gluten develops when mixed with liquid.
Butter
Chopped into the flour to create a tender, flaky texture as it melts in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that lifts the dough.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Sour cream or rich milk
Adds moisture, fat and a slight tang that tenderises the dough.
Strawberries
Provide sweet, juicy fruit filling and a fresh acidic flavour.

The step that matters

Handling the dough. Mixing the dough only until it is soft enough to roll limits gluten development, keeping the shortcake tender rather than tough and 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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