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 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 the cakes
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and sugar. Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Stir in milk until just combined.
Divide the batter between two greased cake pans.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown.
Macerate and assemble
In a separate bowl, mix strawberries with ½ cup sugar and let sit for 10 minutes.
Once the cakes are cool, layer them with strawberries in between.
Top with remaining strawberries and finish with charlotte russe or whipped cream.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + milktop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter so the cakes rise and become light.
- Butter
- Cut into the flour to create tender, crumbly layers and add richness.
- Milk
- Hydrates the flour to form a soft batter and adds moisture to the cakes.
- Fresh strawberries
- Add bright fruit flavor and juice that soaks into the cake layers.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cakes and draws juice out of the strawberries to make syrup.
The step that matters
Cutting in the butter. If the butter is overworked or melts, the crumb turns dense instead of tender. Stopping at coarse crumbs keeps small pockets of fat that create flaky, tender layers as the cakes bake.
“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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