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Dessert

Strawbeiiry Short Cake

A crumbly cake made with flour, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, salt, and milk, topped with sweetened strawberries.

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

Strawbeiiry Short Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the flour and butter together until crumbly.

  2. Add cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  3. Mix in enough milk to form a dough.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  2. Split the cake, spread with butter, and cover with sweetened strawberries.

  3. Serve hot.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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 main structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to create a crumbly, tender texture and adds richness.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so the baking soda reacts and helps the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the dough together, adding moisture.

The step that matters

Rub the flour and butter together until crumbly. Breaking the butter into the flour in small pieces keeps the dough tender and flaky. If the butter is overworked or melted, the cake turns dense and tough instead of light and crumbly.

“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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