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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

Strawberry Shortcake is a baked dessert made with flour, butter, milk, egg, baking powder, salt, sugar, and topped with strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Shortcake

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 batter

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

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

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

  4. In another bowl, beat the egg and mix it with the milk.

  5. Add the egg mixture, salt, and sugar to the flour mixture and stir until soft.

Bake and assemble

  1. Spread the batter onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Once baked, spread butter between each layer and add strawberries and sugar.

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 that holds the shortcake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the shortcake rises and stays light.
Butter
Cut into the flour to create tender layers and add richness.
Egg
Adds structure and richness to the batter and helps bind it.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and gives the batter moisture and softness.

The step that matters

Cutting in the butter. Butter should stay in small cold pieces until baking; as it melts in the oven it creates steam pockets that give flaky, tender layers. If it is overworked into a smooth paste, the shortcake becomes dense.

“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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