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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A sweet cake made with pastry flour, shortening, and strawberries, topped with whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cakes

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, shortening, and salt.

  3. Add milk gradually until a dough forms.

  4. Divide the dough into two cakes.

  5. Bake the cakes until golden.

  6. Once baked, spread butter over the cakes.

Make the filling and serve

  1. Mix the sugar with the strawberries for the filling.

  2. Whip the cream until soft peaks form.

  3. Layer the strawberries and cream between the cakes.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

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

  5. Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Pastry flour
Forms the structure of the cakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so the baking soda reacts and lifts it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and filling.
Cream
Whipped to add richness and a light, airy texture to the filling.

The step that matters

Whip the cream until soft peaks form. Cream stops at soft peaks when whipped: overwhipping past that point turns it grainy and eventually into butter, while underwhipping leaves it too runny to hold its shape between the layers.

“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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