Name: Strawberry Short Cake
Ingredients: 2 cups sour milk or cream; 1 pint strawberries; ½ cup heavy cream; ½ cup granulated sugar

Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Strawberry Short Cake

Ingredients

2 cups sour milk or cream
1 pint strawberries
½ cup heavy cream
½ cup granulated sugar

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make a short cake using sour milk or cream, shaped like a dinner plate.
Bake the cake until golden brown.

Assemble and serve

Slice the cake in half horizontally.
Mash the strawberries and mix with heavy cream and granulated sugar.
Spread the strawberry mixture over the bottom half of the cake.
Place the top half of the cake back on.
Let the cake stand for 1 hour before cutting into wedges and serving.

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.

Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Milk and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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

Sour milk or cream: Adds tenderness and acidity to the short cake crumb.
Strawberries: Provide the fruity flavour and moisture of the filling.
Heavy cream: Adds richness and a soft texture to the strawberry filling.
Granulated sugar: Sweetens the strawberries and helps draw out their juices.

“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.