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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, sweet milk, and layered with strawberries, sugar, 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.

Make the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, butter, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  3. Add sweet milk gradually to form a soft dough.

  4. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and place in a shallow pan.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden.

  2. While baking, prepare the strawberries.

  3. Split the baked cake in half and layer half the strawberries in between.

  4. Cover the strawberries with white sugar and cream.

  5. Place the other half of the cake on top and repeat the layering.

  6. Serve immediately.

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. Cream + sugartop 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the dough sets in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and contributes to a rich flavor.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the dough to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Fresh strawberries
Provide the fruity acidity and moisture that contrast with the cake.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick. Dough that is too thin bakes dry and crisp, while dough that is too thick may stay doughy in the centre. Even thickness helps the cake bake evenly and split cleanly.

“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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