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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, topped with sliced strawberries and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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

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.

Prepare the cake

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

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

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

  4. Stir in milk until just combined.

  5. Divide the batter between two greased cake pans and bake for 15-20 minutes.

Prepare the berries

  1. While the cake is baking, mix strawberries with ¾ cup sugar and let sit.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once the cakes are cool, slice them in half horizontally.

  2. Butter the cut sides of the cakes and layer with strawberries.

  3. Top with the remaining strawberries and finish with charlotte russe or whipped 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. 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Cut into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and dissolves sugar, giving the batter moisture and structure.
Strawberries
Provide fresh fruit flavor, juice and acidity that moisten the layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and draws juice from the strawberries to make syrup.

The step that matters

Stir in milk until just combined. Overmixing once the liquid is added develops gluten in the flour, which makes the cake tough rather than tender.

“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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