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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked pastry made from flour, lard, salt, and water, topped with butter and layered with strawberries and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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 dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, lard, and salt.

  3. Add cold water gradually until the mixture holds together.

  4. Work the dough gently and roll it out.

Bake and assemble

  1. Place the rolled dough in jelly tins and bake until golden.

  2. Remove from the oven and spread butter on top while hot.

  3. Layer the fruit between the baked layers and sprinkle with sugar to taste.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with water.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the dough tender and flaky as it bakes.
Cold water
Brings the flour and fat together into a dough that holds shape.
Strawberries or canned berries
Supply fruit flavour and moisture between the baked layers.

The step that matters

Add cold water gradually. Adding water slowly and stopping once the dough holds together prevents a tough dough, since extra water lets gluten develop too much. Cold water also keeps the lard solid, which helps the dough stay flaky.

“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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