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Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A light cake made with powdered sugar, butter, eggs, flour, sweet cream, and strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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.

Prepare the cake

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

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

  3. Add the eggs and mix until smooth.

  4. Fold in the flour and sweet cream until just combined.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly‑cake tins and bake until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. Let the cakes cool completely.

  2. Layer the sliced strawberries between the cakes, sprinkling each layer with powdered sugar.

  3. Top the final layer with more powdered sugar and serve fresh.

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
Trap air and add structure, giving the cakes their light, sturdy crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps create a fine, tender texture when creamed with butter.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Strawberries
Provide fresh fruit flavor, sweetness and moisture between the layers.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour and sweet cream until just combined. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cake tough and dense instead of tender.

“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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