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Dessert

Strawberry or Peach Shortcake

A shortcake made with butter, flour, sour cream, baking soda, salt, topped with strawberries and served with 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 cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Strawberry or Peach Shortcake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  3. Stir in the sour cream, baking soda, and salt to form a dough.

  4. Roll the dough into cakes ½ inch thick and 10 inches in diameter.

  5. Prick the cakes with a fork and bake until golden.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once baked, split the cakes open and spread with butter.

  2. Layer the bottom piece with strawberries, sprinkling them with sugar beforehand if desired.

  3. Place the top piece of the cake crust-side down over the strawberries.

  4. Add another layer of strawberries, then top with the bottom piece of another cake.

  5. Finish with the top piece right side up and serve with sweet 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + sugartop 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

Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the crumb and adds richness to the split cakes.
Flour
Provides the main structure of the cakes once it is bound into a dough.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, tenderising the dough and reacting with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to release gas, helping the cakes rise.
Strawberries
Add sweetness, moisture and fresh fruit flavour between the cake layers.

The step that matters

Prick the cakes with a fork before baking. Pricking lets steam escape from the dough as it bakes, so the cakes stay flat and even rather than puffing unevenly. Baking until golden gives them a sturdy, browned crust that can hold the fruit and cream.

“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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