Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A layered cake made with flour, shortening, butter, milk, and strawberries, served with sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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

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, baking powder, salt, and shortening until crumbly.

  3. Add milk and stir until a dough forms.

  4. Divide the dough in half.

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

Layer and bake

  1. Spread soft butter on the bottom layer.

  2. Place the top layer on the buttered bottom layer.

  3. Repeat with the second half of the dough.

  4. Bake in the oven until golden brown.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once baked, separate the layers with a knife where the butter was spread.

  2. Place the bottom layer on a serving plate and cover with prepared strawberries mixed with sugar.

  3. Add the top layer and pour any remaining juice around the cake.

  4. 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. 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

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 biscuit layers as the dough sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas when heated, helping the layers rise and become light.
Shortening
Coats flour particles when rubbed in, producing a tender, flaky crumb.
Milk
Hydrates the flour so the mixture forms a cohesive dough.
Soft butter
Spread between layers, it separates them and adds richness and flavor.
Strawberries
Provide tart fruit flavor and juice that soaks into the layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and draws out their juice.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking sets the dough and browns its surface; underbaked layers stay gummy and may stick together when separated, while overbaking dries them out.

“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