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Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A baked cake made from flour, butter, milk, and strawberries, served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Strawberry Short-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Mix the baking powder into the flour.

  3. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Add enough milk to form a soft dough, slightly softer than biscuit dough.

  5. Spread the dough onto two pie tins.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Let the cakes cool slightly, then cut around the edges and split them in half.

  3. Spread butter on each half, then layer with 1 quart of mashed strawberries and sugar.

  4. Add the other half of the cake on top, then layer with whole strawberries and more sugar.

Serve

  1. Serve with a pitcher of 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cakes rise and stay light.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderize the crumb and add richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the dough holds together and bakes through.
Strawberries
Provide juicy moisture and fresh fruit flavor against the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and balances the cake's flavor.

The step that matters

Rub in the butter until coarse crumbs form. Stopping at coarse crumbs keeps small pockets of fat distributed through the flour. As the cakes bake, that fat keeps the texture tender and flaky rather than tough and 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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