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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A shortcake made with lard, flour, baking powder, water, butter, and topped with crushed strawberries or raspberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 the dough

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

  2. Sift together the flour and baking powder.

  3. Rub the lard into the flour.

  4. Add water gradually, stirring with a spoon to form a soft dough.

  5. Turn the dough onto a floured board and shape it into a round without kneading.

  6. Roll out the dough to about 1 inch thick.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a long tin until golden.

  2. Split the baked shortcake, butter it generously, and fill with crushed and sweetened strawberries or raspberries.

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

Lard
Rubbed into the flour, it coats flour particles and makes the shortcake tender and crumbly.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once moistened, setting as the shortcake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the shortcake rise and turn light.
Butter
Spread on the split shortcake, it adds richness and moisture.
Strawberries or raspberries
Crushed and sweetened, they add fruity sweetness and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Shape without kneading. Kneading develops gluten and makes the dough tough, so the dough should be gathered and shaped gently to keep the shortcake tender 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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