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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A cake made from flour, butter, baking powder, milk or water, baked in two layers and served with sweetened, partly mashed strawberries.

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 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.

Prepare the shortcake

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, butter, and baking powder until crumbly.

  3. Add milk or water gradually to form a soft dough.

  4. Divide the dough into two layers and bake until golden.

Prepare the strawberries

  1. While the layers bake, wash and sweeten the strawberries, then partly mash them.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once baked, butter the layers and place the strawberries between them.

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. 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. Butter + sugartop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough as it bakes into layers.
Butter
Adds fat that keeps the shortcake tender and rich.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so the layers rise.
Milk or water
Hydrates the flour so the mixture binds into a soft dough.
Strawberries
Provide fruity moisture and aroma that contrast with the shortcake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness that balances the tartness of the strawberries.

The step that matters

Adding the liquid to the dough. Adding milk or water gradually and mixing only until combined keeps the dough soft. Overworking develops gluten, which makes the shortcake tough rather than tender.

“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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