Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A light cake made with flour, baking powder, butter, milk, strawberries, and sugar, baked in two layers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

Make the dough

  1. Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Add sweet milk gradually to form a soft dough.

  4. Divide the dough into two parts and roll each into a flat circle of the same size.

Bake and assemble

  1. Stack one circle on top of the other and bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  2. Once baked, the layers will separate; spread plenty of butter on top.

  3. Spread the crushed strawberries over the bottom crust and sprinkle with sugar.

  4. Spread butter on the top crust and place it over the strawberries.

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 dough once mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the shortcake rise and turn light.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderize the crumb and adds richness and flavor.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough and adds moisture.
Strawberries
Provide moisture, fruity flavor, and acidity that balances the sweetness.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and draws out their juices.

The step that matters

Stacking and baking the two circles. The dough must be rolled to matching sizes and baked until fully set so the layers separate cleanly for filling. Underbaked layers stay gummy and tear when split.

“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.

More strawberry shortcake recipes

Sauce 6 See all 339 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes