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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A layered cake made with flour, shortening, salt, water, strawberries, and sugar, baked and buttered.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 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.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the shortening until very light.

  2. Mix the flour and salt in a bowl, then add the creamed shortening.

  3. Sprinkle in the cold water and mix gently with a broad knife.

  4. Pound the mixture with a rolling pin until ready to roll out.

  5. Roll out to about ½ inch thick and cut into squares or place in round pie pans.

Bake and assemble

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

  2. Once baked, split the cakes open and butter the insides.

  3. Sugar the insides liberally, then add a layer of strawberries and more sugar.

  4. Place the top crust on and sugar the top well.

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. 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the shortcake as gluten develops and the dough sets in the oven.
Shortening
Adds fat that coats flour particles, producing a short, tender, flaky texture.
Cold water
Binds the flour and fat into a dough while keeping the fat cold for flakiness.
Strawberries
Provide moisture, acidity and fresh flavour that contrast with the rich crust.
Sugar
Sweetens the shortcake and draws out the juice of the strawberries.

The step that matters

Keep the dough cold and handle it gently. Cold, lightly mixed fat stays in distinct pieces that melt in the oven and create flaky layers. Overworking or warm fat develops toughness and makes the shortcake 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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