Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A layered cake made with buttered crusts and fresh strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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.

Make the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and place it in a round pie tin.

  5. Spread butter or lard over the dough and sprinkle lightly with flour.

  6. Lay another crust over this and bake until golden.

Assemble the shortcake

  1. Once baked, remove the top crust and butter it well.

  2. Spread a thick layer of strawberries and sugar on the bottom crust.

  3. Replace the top crust, butter it, and add more strawberries on top.

  4. Pour any remaining strawberry juice over the cake.

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 that holds the layered crust together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the crust rises and becomes light.
Unsalted butter
Cut in cold, it creates flaky layers and a tender, crumbly texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and draws out their juice as they sit.
Fresh strawberries
Supply the fruit flavor, moisture, and acidity that balance the rich crust.

The step that matters

Cut in the butter until coarse crumbs form. Small pieces of cold fat stay separate in the dough and melt in the oven, leaving flaky layers. If the butter softens or the dough is overworked, gluten develops and the crust turns dense and tough.

“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