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Dessert

Sweet Strawberry Shortcake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, strawberries, and meringue.

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

Sweet Strawberry Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs and mix well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then stir into the mixture.

  5. Pour the batter into deep tin plates and bake until golden.

Assemble

  1. While the cake is baking, mix the strawberries with 1 cup of sugar.

  2. Once the cake is baked, spread the strawberries between the layers.

  3. For the top layer, make a meringue by beating the egg white and adding powdered sugar, then spread it over the strawberries.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the cake crumb.
Strawberries
Provide moisture, fruity acidity and sweetness between the layers.
Egg white
Whipped into a meringue that gives a light, sweet topping.

The step that matters

Make the meringue. Egg white must be beaten until it holds stiff peaks; under-beaten or greasy whites will not hold the sugar and will weep or flatten on the strawberries.

“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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