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Dessert

Strawberry Shortcake

A baked shortcake with strawberries, flour, butter, sour cream, egg, sugar, baking soda, and salt.

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 Shortcake

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.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour and salt, then cut in the butter until crumbly.

  3. In another bowl, combine the sour cream, egg, sugar, and baking soda mixture.

  4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

  5. Roll out the dough into two sheets, placing one on a greased baking pan.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer strawberries on the bottom crust and sprinkle with powdered sugar.

  2. Cover with the second crust.

  3. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden brown.

  4. Serve warm.

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the crust as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Cut into the flour to create a crumbly, tender texture with flaky layers.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, giving the dough a tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour cream to produce gas that helps the crust rise.

The step that matters

Mixing the wet and dry ingredients. Mixing only until just combined keeps gluten development limited, so the crust stays tender rather than tough and dense.

“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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