Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A baked biscuit topped with crushed strawberries and optional cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Short-cake

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. In a bowl, mix the sweet milk, baking powder, butter, sugar, and salt until combined.

  3. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and spread melted butter on top.

  4. Fold the buttered sides together and cut out biscuits 3 inches in diameter.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake the biscuits in the preheated oven until golden.

  2. While the biscuits bake, crush the strawberries and sprinkle them heavily with sugar.

  3. Once the biscuits are done, break them apart and layer strawberries between and on top.

  4. Serve with or without 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat that makes the biscuits tender and rich, and browns during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the biscuits rise and turn light.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture to the biscuits.
Strawberries
Provide fresh fruit flavor and juice that soaks into the biscuits.
Sugar
Sweetens the biscuits and draws juice out of the strawberries when sprinkled on them.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough to ½ inch thick. Keeping the dough at an even thickness helps the biscuits rise evenly and bake through without drying at the edges.

“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.

More strawberry shortcake recipes

Sauce 6 See all 339 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes