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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A shortcake made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, and topped with sliced strawberries and cream.

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 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. In another bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  4. Add the milk to the butter mixture and mix well.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mixing until just combined.

  6. Divide the batter evenly between two greased cake tins.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.

  2. While the cakes are baking, mix the strawberries with ½ cup of sugar and let sit.

  3. Once the cakes are cool, slice them in half horizontally.

  4. Spread butter on the cut sides of the cakes and layer with strawberries.

  5. Top with the remaining strawberries and finish with charlotte russe or 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 + 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
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the batter so the cakes rise and stay light.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the creamed batter trap air.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes, helps browning, and macerates the strawberries into a syrup.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the batter forms a soft, cohesive structure.
Fresh strawberries
Add fresh acidity and sweetness, and juice that soaks into the cake layers.

The step that matters

Mixing the flour into the wet ingredients. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development low, so the cakes stay tender 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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