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Dessert

Strawberry Short-Cake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, milk, leavening, and served with fresh strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder (or cream of tartar and baking soda).

  3. Chop the butter into the flour mixture using a knife until crumbly.

  4. Add milk gradually and mix until a dough forms.

  5. Divide the dough into two equal parts and shape into cakes.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

  2. Let cool, then layer with fresh strawberries and serve.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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 shortcake together as it bakes.
Unsalted butter
Chopped in, it creates a crumbly, tender texture as it melts during baking.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture forms a dough and adds moisture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidic leavening partner that reacts with baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid cream of tartar to produce gas for rising and light texture.

The step that matters

Chopping the butter into the flour. The butter must stay in cold, distinct pieces until baking. Those pieces melt and leave pockets of steam, which makes the cakes flaky and tender rather than 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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