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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A layered cake made with flour, butter, milk, strawberries, and whipped cream.

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 Short Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift baking powder into flour.

  2. Mix in sugar, salt, and butter.

  3. Add enough sweet milk to form a soft dough.

  4. Roll out the dough thinly and place one layer in a pan.

  5. Spread the layer with butter and sprinkle with flour.

  6. Add another layer of dough; repeat to make four layers.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the top layer and spread with sweetened strawberries.

  3. Stack the layers, treating each with strawberries.

Serve

  1. Serve warm with sugar and whipped 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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 layers as it binds with the milk.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the layers and helps them separate when spread.
Strawberries
Provide moisture, tartness and aroma that contrast with the rich dough.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour so it forms a soft, cohesive dough.

The step that matters

Sweetened strawberries between layers. Strawberries release juice as they sit, which can soak the biscuit layers and make them soggy. Assembling close to serving keeps the layers tender and the texture pleasant.

“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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