Name: Strawberry Shortcake
Ingredients: 1 egg; sweetened crushed strawberries; shortening; flour; baking powder

Why it works: Egg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Strawberry Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the strawberries

Crush strawberries using a chopping knife or a baking powder can.
Sweeten the crushed strawberries.

Make the cake

Bake a one egg cake in two layers.
Bake the layers.
Split them.

Make the biscuit version

For a biscuit version, make a tender biscuit dough with plenty of shortening.
Roll out the dough thinly.
Butter or dredge with flour.
Fold once.
Cut to fit two square tins.

Assemble

Put sweetened crushed strawberries between the layers and on top.

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.

Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg: Provides structure and richness to the cake layers as it sets while baking.
Shortening: Adds fat that keeps the biscuit dough tender and flaky rather than tough.
Flour: Forms the structure of the cake and biscuit dough as its proteins set with heat.
Baking powder: Releases gas when heated, helping the layers and biscuits rise.
Sweetened crushed strawberries: Adds moisture, sweetness and fruit flavour between and on top of the layers.

“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.