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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A light cake made with flour, baking powder, butter, milk, egg, and topped with crushed strawberries, cream, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

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. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt thoroughly.

  2. Chop butter into the flour mixture.

  3. Add sweet milk and beaten egg, mixing quickly with minimal handling.

  4. Roll the dough into two sheets, each ½ inch thick.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in jelly tins at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  2. While warm, split the cakes and butter them.

  3. Add a thick layer of crushed strawberries with sugar.

  4. Serve with cream and sugar.

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cakes as its starch and proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cakes rise and become light.
Butter
Cut into the flour to add fat, tenderness and flakiness to the crumb.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping bind the dough and set during baking.
Sweet milk
Moistens the flour so it forms a dough and adds tenderness and browning.
Strawberries
Provide fruity moisture and bright acidity that contrast with the rich cake.

The step that matters

Mixing the dough with minimal handling. Overworking wheat flour dough develops gluten, which makes the cakes tough instead of tender. Mixing quickly until just combined keeps the texture soft 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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