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Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A layered cake made with buttered shortcake and sliced strawberries, served with sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Strawberry Short-cake

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 dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and sugar. Cut in the butter until crumbly.

  3. Divide the dough in half. Roll each half to fit a biscuit tin or large pie tin.

  4. Spread soft butter on the bottom layer and place the top layer on it.

  5. Repeat with the remaining dough for another short-cake.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until golden brown, then remove from the oven.

  2. Slice each short-cake where the butter was spread to separate layers.

  3. Place the bottom layer on a serving plate and cover with prepared strawberries.

  4. Add the top layer and pour any remaining strawberry juice around the cake.

Serve

  1. Serve with a pitcher of sweet 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. 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 biscuit-like short-cake layers as it sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the short-cake layers rise and become light.
Butter
Cut into the flour to create a crumbly, tender texture and spread between layers.
Strawberries
Provide fruity flavor and juice that moistens the layers when spooned over.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Underbaked short-cake stays pale and doughy inside, while overbaking dries it out. Golden color signals that the starches and sugars have browned enough for good flavor and a sturdy structure.

“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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