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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked soda biscuit cake topped with sliced strawberries and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Shortcake

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

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

  2. Make a soda biscuit dough with the flour.

  3. Divide the dough.

  4. Roll out two layers to fit a jelly cake pan.

  5. Place one layer in the pan.

  6. Spread a little butter on top of the first layer.

  7. Add the second layer lightly on top.

Bake and prepare fruit

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. Prepare the strawberries by hulling and slicing them if large.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over the strawberries.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove the top layer of the cake.

  2. Place the bottom layer on a serving plate.

  3. Spread butter liberally on the bottom layer.

  4. Top the bottom layer with half of the strawberries.

  5. Invert the top layer onto the strawberries.

  6. Butter the inverted top layer.

  7. Add the remaining strawberries on top.

  8. Serve hot.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. 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 soda biscuit dough as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture between and over the layers.
Strawberries
Provide moisture, sweetness and fresh acidity to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the strawberries and draws out their juices.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Underbaked biscuit layers stay gummy and pale, while overbaking dries them out. Watching for a golden color shows the starches have set and the surface has browned.

“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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