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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A light cake made with flour, butter, milk, and sugar, topped with sliced strawberries and additional sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and sugar.

  3. Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Add milk and stir until just combined.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking dish and bake until golden, about 25-30 minutes.

  2. Once baked, let the cake cool slightly, then slice it in half.

  3. Spread butter on the inside, fill with strawberries, and sprinkle with sugar.

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 cake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Cut into the flour to create tender, flaky crumbs and adds richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and helps form a soft, moist batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Fresh strawberries
Provide moisture, bright acidity and sweetness in the filling.

The step that matters

Cut in the butter until coarse crumbs form. Stopping at coarse crumbs keeps pockets of fat intact; as they melt in the oven they create a tender, flaky texture. Overworking the mixture develops gluten and makes the cake tough.

“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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