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Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A layered cake made with cream or sour milk dough, butter, strawberries, and sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Strawberry 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.

Make the dough

  1. Combine the cream or sour milk, salt, and baking soda in a bowl.

  2. Gradually stir in enough flour to form a soft dough.

  3. Roll the dough into thin circles.

  4. Spread butter on top of each dough circle.

  5. Stack the buttered dough circles.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

  2. Separate the baked layers.

  3. Butter the top of the first layer.

  4. Cover the first layer with strawberries.

  5. Butter the second layer before placing it on top.

  6. Add more strawberries on the second layer.

  7. Top with the third layer.

  8. Bake for a few more minutes.

  9. Serve hot with 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Cream or sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the dough rise and turn tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream or sour milk to release gas that lightens the dough.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once mixed with the liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the layers separate and brown.
Strawberries
Provide fruit flavor, moisture, and sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Separate the baked layers. The layers must be split while still warm so they come apart cleanly; once fully cooled, the baked dough can be hard to separate without breaking.

“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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