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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked cake topped with sugared strawberries and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

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 cake

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

  2. Mix the flour, butter, and sugar to form a dough.

  3. Shape the dough into a round cake and bake until golden.

Assemble

  1. Once baked, split the cake in half and spread butter on both sides.

  2. Prepare the strawberries by mixing them with sugar (and cream if desired).

  3. Place the sugared strawberries on the lower half of the cake and cover with the top half.

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. 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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 so the cake holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderising the crumb and adding flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and macerates the strawberries, drawing out their juice.
Egg
Binds the dough and helps give the cake structure and colour.
Fresh strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavour, sweetness and juicy moisture in the filling.

The step that matters

Baking the cake until golden. Baking until golden browns the surface through the Maillard reaction, adding flavour, while the interior must be fully set so the split cake does not stay doughy or collapse under the berries.

“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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