Name: Strawberry Short Cake
Ingredients: soda biscuit dough; butter; fresh strawberries; sugar

Why it works: Biscuit and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,009 recipes. Both carry nonanal, which smells fat, citrus. The science ↓

Strawberry Short Cake

Ingredients

soda biscuit dough
butter
fresh strawberries
sugar

Directions

Prepare soda biscuit dough and roll it thin to fit your cake pans.
Butter both the inside and outside of the cake layers.
Pick and sugar the strawberries to release their juice.
Spread the sugared strawberries on both layers of the cake.
Stack the layers and place in the oven for a few minutes to warm the berries.

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.

Biscuit + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,009 recipes

Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).
Biscuit + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,874 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).