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Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A light cake made with butter, flour, sugar, and topped with sliced strawberries and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 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 flour and baking powder, then cut in the butter until crumbly.

  3. Add sugar and mix well.

  4. Divide the dough in half.

  5. Roll each half to fit a biscuit tin or large pie tin.

Bake and assemble

  1. Spread soft butter on the bottom crust and place the top crust over it.

  2. Repeat with the second half of the dough.

  3. Bake until golden brown, then remove from the oven.

  4. Slice each short-cake where the butter was spread to separate.

  5. Place the bottom crusts on serving plates and top with strawberries.

  6. Pour any remaining strawberry juice around the cake.

  7. Serve with a pitcher of 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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 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).

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 structure of the dough as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the shortcake rises and turns light.
Unsalted butter
Cut into the flour to create flaky layers and a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Strawberries
Provide fruity sweetness and juice that moistens the shortcake.
Sweet cream
Adds richness and a cool, creamy contrast to the warm shortcake.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking until golden brown ensures the crust is fully set and cooked through, giving the shortcake a sturdy structure that holds up to the juicy strawberries.

“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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