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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, milk, and leavening, topped with strawberries and 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 Shortcake

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

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

  3. Add enough milk to form a stiff batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the batter into pie pans and bake until golden.

  2. Once baked, layer the shortcake with strawberries and 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. 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 main structure of the shortcake as its proteins set in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to help the shortcake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that lifts the shortcake.
Butter
Cut into the flour to create a crumbly, tender texture as it stays solid before baking.
Strawberries
Add fresh fruit flavour and juiciness that contrast with the plain shortcake.

The step that matters

Cut in the butter until coarse crumbs form. Over-mixing or melting the butter into the flour makes the shortcake dense and tough. Small cold pieces of fat stay separate until baking, creating layers and a tender, flaky crumb.

“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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