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Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A cake made from flour, butter, egg, baking powder, and milk, topped with bruised strawberries covered in sugar and dusted with powdered sugar.

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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the berries

  1. Prepare strawberries in a bowl and bruise them with a potato masher.

  2. Cover with a thick layer of white sugar and set aside.

Make and bake the dough

  1. Combine the flour, butter, beaten egg, baking powder, and enough milk to form a stiff dough.

  2. Knead the dough well and roll it out to about 1 inch thick.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  4. Turn the cake out of the pan.

Assemble and serve

  1. Slice it in half with a sharp knife and let it sit for a few minutes to release steam.

  2. Place the bottom layer on a plate and cover it thickly with the prepared strawberries.

  3. Dust with powdered sugar and place the top layer on.

  4. Pour the berry juice around the cake before serving.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough so the cake holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cake tender and rich.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and turns light.
Strawberries
Provide fruity acidity and moisture that soften the cake layers.

The step that matters

Let the cake rest before slicing. Cutting a hot cake releases steam too quickly and can make the crumb gummy and crumbly. A short rest lets the structure set so the layers split cleanly.

“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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