Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberky Short-cake

A layered cake made from a stiff dough of flour, butter, egg, baking powder, and milk, topped with bruised strawberries and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Strawberky 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 strawberries

  1. Wash the strawberries under a gentle stream of water.

  2. Drain them in an earthen bowl.

  3. Bruise the strawberries with a potato masher.

  4. Cover the bruised strawberries with a thick layer of white sugar. Set aside.

Make and bake the shortcake

  1. In a bowl, combine the flour, butter, beaten egg, and baking powder.

  2. Add milk to form a stiff dough. Knead the dough well.

  3. Roll it out to about 1 inch thick.

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

  5. Remove the cake from the pan.

  6. Cut it lengthwise and crosswise to let steam escape.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the bottom crust on a platter.

  2. Cover it with a thick layer of strawberries.

  3. Add the top crust.

  4. Dust with powdered sugar.

  5. Pour any remaining berry juice around 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. 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 once combined with liquid and kneaded.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and gives a rich flavour.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Strawberries
Provide fruit flavour, moisture and acidity that balance the sweet cake.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking at 400°F sets the structure and browns the crust; underbaking leaves the centre gummy, while overbaking dries the cake out.

“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