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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A layered cake made with butter, powdered sugar, eggs, flour, sweet cream, baking powder, and strawberries, topped with sugar.

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 Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, rub the butter into the powdered sugar.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the flour, sweet cream, and baking powder until combined.

  5. Divide the batter evenly into three jelly cake pans.

  6. Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

  7. Let the cakes cool completely.

Assemble and serve

  1. Layer the cakes with strawberries and sprinkle sugar between each layer and on top.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Provide structure and lift, setting the crumb as the batter bakes.
Flour
Forms the gluten and starch framework that gives the cake its structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and carries flavor through the batter.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and softens its texture as it is creamed with butter.
Strawberries
Add fresh fruit flavor, sweetness, and moisture between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean. Underbaking leaves wet batter in the center that can collapse as it cools, while overbaking dries the crumb and toughens it. The toothpick test confirms the structure has set throughout.

“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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