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Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, milk, and mashed strawberries, served with butter and strawberries.

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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt; sift twice.

  3. Rub in the butter, then add milk to form a soft dough.

  4. Roll out the dough to 1 inch thick and cut into a square.

  5. Place in a greased square pan, making the center thinner than the edges.

Bake and prepare the strawberries

  1. Bake for about 20 minutes until thoroughly cooked.

  2. Mash the strawberries in a bowl and stir in sugar.

  3. Once baked, remove the cake, trim the edges, and pull apart.

Assemble and serve

  1. Butter one portion, cover with strawberries, and top with the other half.

  2. Serve immediately with cold milk or 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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).

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
Provides the main structure of the cake as its proteins and starches set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the cake rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating flour particles and softening the crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough and adds moisture and browning.
Strawberries
Add fruity moisture and acidity that contrast with the sweet, rich cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and helps draw out their juices.

The step that matters

Making the center thinner than the edges. Baking powder cakes cook unevenly when the middle is thick, so the center can stay doughy while the edges overbake. A thinner center helps the whole cake cook through at the same rate.

“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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