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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A layered cake made with flour, butter, lard, baking powder, salt, strawberries, powdered sugar, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Strawberry Shortcake

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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, butter, lard, baking powder, and salt until combined.

  3. Roll out the dough into two sheets.

  4. Spread a little butter on one sheet and place the other sheet on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden, then split open.

  2. Mash some strawberries and spread between the two crusts.

  3. Roll the remaining strawberries in powdered sugar and place on top.

  4. Serve with whipped 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  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 dough once combined with fat and liquid-free binders.
Butter
Creates flaky layers and tenderness as it melts and steams in the oven.
Lard
Adds tenderness and flakiness to the crust by keeping pieces of fat separate.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the crust rises and becomes light.
Strawberries
Provide sweetness, acidity and moisture to the filling and topping.

The step that matters

Bake until golden, then split open. Split the crust while it is still warm so steam can escape and it stays tender; a fully cooled crust is harder to split cleanly. Baking until golden ensures the starch is set and the crust is browned for flavor.

“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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