Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked shortcake crust topped with sugared strawberries, served with optional frosting and cream.

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 ↓

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. In a bowl, mix the egg, butter, sugar, milk or water, and baking powder.

  3. Add enough flour to form a very soft dough.

  4. Knead the dough as little as possible and roll it out to fit a jelly tin.

Bake and top

  1. Bake until golden brown.

  2. Top the baked crust with the sugared strawberries.

  3. If desired, save the egg white for frosting mixed with a little sugar.

  4. Spread the frosting over the top and return to the oven until slightly browned.

Serve

  1. Serve with additional sugar and cream.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 soft dough structure that holds the crust together when baked.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough and set the crust.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the crust.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the crust rises and becomes light.
Strawberries
Provide fruity sweetness and juice that moistens the crust.
Sugar
Sweetens the crust and strawberries and helps the crust brown.

The step that matters

Knead the dough as little as possible. Overworking develops gluten in flour, making the crust tough rather than tender. A very soft dough should be handled gently and briefly.

“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