Skip to main content
Dessert

Strawberry Short Cake

A layered cake made with a butter‑flour dough, sour cream, and strawberries, finished with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, chop the butter into the flour as for pastry.

  3. In another bowl, mix the egg, sour cream (or milk), and baking soda dissolved in hot water.

  4. Combine all ingredients, handling the dough as little as possible.

  5. Roll out the dough into two sheets, one ½ inch thick for the upper crust and the other thinner for the lower crust.

Bake and assemble

  1. Place the thicker sheet in a round cake pan and bake until golden.

  2. While warm, separate the layers and place a thick layer of strawberries on the lower crust.

  3. Sprinkle powdered sugar over the strawberries and cover with the upper crust.

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. Cream + sugartop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 dough once combined with liquid.
Butter
Chopped into the flour, it creates a tender, flaky texture as it melts in the oven.
Sour cream or milk
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic dairy to produce gas, helping the dough rise.
Strawberries
Provide the fresh, sweet-tart fruit flavor and moisture that sit between the layers.

The step that matters

Handling the dough as little as possible. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which makes the shortcake tough and dense instead of tender. Mix only until the ingredients just come together.

“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.

More strawberry shortcake recipes

Sauce 6 See all 339 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes