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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, baking powder, milk, and topped with mashed strawberries and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 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. Sift baking powder and salt into the flour.

  3. Cut in the butter until well combined.

  4. Mix in just enough milk to form a dough.

Assemble and bake

  1. Grease an 8-inch square pan with butter.

  2. Divide the dough in half and roll out one half to fit the pan.

  3. Place the rolled dough in the pan and grease the top with butter.

  4. Roll out the second half of the dough and place it on top.

  5. Bake for 40 minutes.

Serve

  1. Once baked, separate the layers.

  2. Mash the strawberries and sweeten them just before serving.

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough as its proteins and starches set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the dough so it rises and turns tender.
Butter
Cut into the flour to create a tender, flaky texture and adds richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture comes together into a dough.

The step that matters

Cut in the butter until well combined. Butter should be evenly distributed in small pieces through the flour. Uneven or overworked butter can make the shortcake tough or greasy instead of tender and crumbly.

“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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