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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A cake made with sugar, butter, baking powder, flour, sweet milk, and strawberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Shortcake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  2. Add baking powder and flour, then mix in enough sweet milk to form a soft dough.

  3. Divide the dough into three layers and spread butter on each layer.

Bake and assemble

  1. Stack the layers on top of each other and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. Mash the strawberries and sweeten to taste; let them sit while the cake bakes.

  3. Once the cake is done and cooled, spread the strawberries between the layers and sprinkle sugar on top.

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 + flourtop 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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the soft dough once mixed with milk.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and is spread between the dough layers.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown as it bakes.
Sweet milk
Moistens the flour so the dough holds together and bakes through.
Strawberries
Provide fruity flavor and moisture between the cooled cake layers.

The step that matters

Let the cake cool before adding strawberries. Warm cake softens and can sog under wet fruit, and the sweetened strawberry juice can make the layers soggy and collapse, so the cake must be fully cooled first.

“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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