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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A baked cake made with flour, lard, milk, and strawberries, topped with sugar and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream 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 Short Cake

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 dough

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

  2. Sift the baking powder into the flour.

  3. Rub in the lard until well combined.

  4. Add the salt and mix.

  5. Make a soft dough with the sweet milk.

  6. Roll out the dough and place it on a pie pan.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Once baked, split the cake and butter the inside well.

  3. Prepare the strawberries and divide them between the middle and top of the cake.

  4. Sprinkle the sugar over the strawberries.

Serve

  1. Serve with cream.

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. Sugar + creamtop 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. Milk + creamtop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the dough sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the cake rise and become light.
Lard or shortening
Rubbed into the flour, it coats flour particles and makes the cake tender and crumbly.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough and adds moisture to the cake.
Strawberries
Provide moisture, tartness and aroma that contrast with the rich, plain cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and draws out their juices.

The step that matters

Make a soft dough with the sweet milk. Too much milk makes the dough sticky and tough, while too little leaves the cake dry and crumbly. Handle the dough gently and only as much as needed, since overworking develops gluten and makes the cake dense.

“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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