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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, sugar, milk, and topped with sliced strawberries and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Cut in butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Stir in milk until just combined.

Bake and macerate

  1. Divide the batter between two greased cake tins and bake for 15-20 minutes until golden.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix strawberries with ¾ cup sugar and let sit to release juices.

Assemble and serve

  1. Once the cakes are cool, layer them with strawberries and their juices, alternating with the biscuit crust.

  2. Top with a final layer of strawberries and finish with charlotte russe or whipped 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 + milktop 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 crust as its proteins set during baking.
Unsalted butter
Cut into the flour to create tender, flaky layers in the crust.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the crust rises and stays light.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form a soft dough and adds tenderness and browning.
Fresh strawberries
Provide fruit flavour and juices that moisten the layers.
Sugar
Sweetens the berries and draws out their juices as it dissolves.

The step that matters

Cutting in the butter. If the butter is overworked or too warm, it blends into the flour instead of staying in small pieces, and the crust turns dense rather than flaky.

“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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