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Dessert

Strawberry Short-cake

A layered cake made with flour, sugar, butter, baking powder, milk, strawberries, whipped cream, and dusted with sugar.

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 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 the sugar, baking powder, and flour. Cut in the butter and add enough sweet milk to form a soft dough.

  3. Roll out the dough and divide it into three layers.

  4. Bake the layers in jelly-cake pans.

Prepare the filling

  1. Mash the strawberries and sweeten them well.

  2. Reserve some large strawberries for the top.

Assemble and serve

  1. Keep the first and third layers whole and split the middle layer.

  2. Butter each layer.

  3. Place the mashed strawberries between the layers.

  4. Layer whipped cream between the strawberry layers.

  5. Dust the top with white sugar.

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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 dough that holds the layers together.
Butter
Cut into the flour to add richness and a tender, flaky texture to the layers.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Strawberries
Provide moisture and fruity sweetness between the layers once mashed and sweetened.
Whipped sweetened cream
Adds fat and a soft, creamy texture between the layers.

The step that matters

Bake the layers in jelly-cake pans. Baking powder needs the oven's heat to release gas, so thin, evenly sized layers in a hot oven rise and brown evenly, while a cold or uneven oven leaves dense layers.

“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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