Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A sweet cake made with milk, butter, flour, sugar, egg, baking powder, topped with crushed strawberries and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, beat together the milk, butter, sugar, and egg until well combined.

  3. Add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  4. Pour the batter into a buttered pie dish and bake until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once baked, cut the shortcake open while warm.

  2. Spread a thick layer of crushed strawberries on the bottom half and sprinkle with sugar.

  3. Replace the top half and dust with powdered sugar.

  4. 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. Milk + buttertop 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
Provides the structure that holds the shortcake together once baked.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure as it sets.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the shortcake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and gives the batter moisture.
Crushed strawberries
Adds fruity sweetness, acidity and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Cut the shortcake open while warm. Cutting while the shortcake is still warm keeps the crumb soft and easy to split cleanly. Once it cools fully, the baked structure firms up and tears more easily under the fruit.

“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