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Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A sweet cake made with strawberries, flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, sweet milk, and topped with whipped sweet 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 Short-cake

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 dough

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

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

  3. Add sweet milk to form a soft dough.

  4. Roll out the dough and bake in three jelly cake pans.

Assemble the shortcake

  1. Mash the strawberries and sweeten them well.

  2. Once the cakes are done, keep the first and third cakes whole.

  3. Split the middle cake and layer it with butter and mashed strawberries.

  4. Dust the top with white sugar.

  5. For a richer cake, reserve some of the largest strawberries for decoration.

  6. Cover the layers with whipped sweet cream after adding the strawberries.

  7. Top the final cake with a thick layer of cream and arrange the reserved strawberries 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 + 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. Butter + flourtop 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).

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 structure of the dough that holds the layers together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough and the middle layer.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the cakes rise and become light.
Strawberries
Provide moisture, fruity flavor, and sweetness in the filling.
Whipped sweet cream
Adds moisture and a soft, rich topping that contrasts with the cakes.

The step that matters

Split the middle cake and layer it with butter and mashed strawberries. Strawberries are juicy and can make the layers soggy if the cake is not fully cooled first. Letting the cakes cool before splitting and filling helps the crumb hold its structure and keeps the layers from sliding.

“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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