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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A baked cake layered with fresh strawberries and powdered sugar, served with rich cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, cream of tartar, and salt.

  3. Rub in butter and lard until crumbly.

  4. Dissolve baking soda in milk and mix into the flour mixture.

Bake

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and bake for 15‑20 minutes in large round or square tins.

  2. Remove from oven and split the cake open immediately.

Assemble and serve

  1. Butter both halves, place strawberries on the bottom half, and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  2. Top with the other half of the cake and serve with rich 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its gluten and starch set in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Reacts with the baking soda to release gas, helping the cake rise and giving a slight tang.
Baking soda
Releases carbon dioxide when combined with the acid, leavening the dough for a light crumb.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and melts into the split halves for flavor and moisture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture and softness to the crumb.
Strawberries
Provide the main fruit flavor, sweetness and juice that soak into the cake.

The step that matters

Split the cake open immediately. Splitting the cake while it is still hot keeps the crumb soft and easy to separate. The warm halves also let the butter melt in and absorb into the cake, while cooling would make it stiffer and more likely to crumble.

“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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