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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A layered cake made with flour, shortening, strawberries, and sugar, baked and served with a strawberry syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and syrup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,842 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. 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. Add the flour and salt.

  3. Sprinkle in the cold water.

  4. Mix with a broad knife.

  5. Gently pound with a rolling pin until ready to roll out.

  6. Roll the dough to about ½ inch thick.

  7. Cut into squares or place in round pie pans.

Bake and assemble

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

  2. Split the baked cake open.

  3. Butter the inside of both pieces.

  4. Sprinkle with sugar.

  5. Layer strawberries on the bottom piece.

  6. Sprinkle with more sugar.

  7. Place the top piece on.

  8. Sugar the top well.

Make the syrup

  1. For syrup, boil 1 pint of berries with 2 pints of sugar for 10 minutes.

  2. Strain.

  3. Cool.

  4. Pour the syrup over the cake when serving, if desired.

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 + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake dough once mixed with liquid.
Shortening
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and flaky rather than tough.
Cold water
Brings the dough together and adds moisture for steam during baking.
Strawberries
Provide fruit flavour and juice that moistens the layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and the berries and helps brown the crust.

The step that matters

Gently pound with a rolling pin until ready to roll out.. Cold fat must stay in distinct pieces within the dough. Overworking or warming it blends the fat in, making the cake dense rather than tender and flaky.

“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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