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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A layered cake made with flour, butter, milk, strawberries, and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Mix the flour and baking powder together.

  3. In a saucepan, combine the milk, butter, and salt over low heat until the butter melts.

  4. Stir the milk mixture into the flour to form a soft dough.

  5. Divide the dough in two, roll each part out to ½ inch thick, and fit into two pie plates.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake for 15 minutes until golden.

  2. While hot, split the cakes and butter them with fresh butter.

  3. Mash the strawberries with the powdered sugar.

  4. Layer the cake crust and strawberries alternately, finishing with strawberries on top.

Serve

  1. Sift powdered sugar over the top and serve with sweetened cream or custard sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 soft dough that becomes the cake layers.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cakes rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough and flavors the split cakes.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the dough moisture and tenderness.
Strawberries
Provide sweetness, acidity, and juicy moisture between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking only until golden sets the crumb while keeping it tender. Underbaking leaves the centre gummy, and overbaking dries the cakes out.

“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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