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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked shortcake topped with strawberries, sugar, and fresh cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, lard, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Add enough milk to form a soft dough.

  4. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick.

  5. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once baked, split the shortcake in half.

  2. Spread butter on the bottom half.

  3. Layer with strawberries and sprinkle with sugar.

  4. Place the top half on and serve with fresh 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. 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 once mixed with liquid and baked.
Lard
Adds fat that makes the shortcake tender and crumbly rather than tough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the shortcake rises and becomes light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough and adds moisture to the shortcake.
Strawberries
Provide fruity flavour and juice that soaks into the shortcake.
Fresh cream
Adds richness and a cool, creamy contrast to the warm shortcake.

The step that matters

Bake in the preheated oven until golden. The oven must already be hot when the dough goes in, so the baking powder gases expand quickly and the shortcake rises. Browning develops flavour on the surface, and a dough that is baked too briefly stays pale and dense inside.

“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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