Strawberry Shortcake? Again?

and Swedish strawberry cream too

I was told by a friend who knows about such things that a recipe for strawberry shortcake that I published in the New York Times food section back in long ago 1986 is one of the most popular of the many recipes that have accumulated in that publication over the years since. That’s partly because it’s a very good recipe. Which it is—plain, simple, and unostentatious, like the friend who gave it to me, Jane Grigson, British food writer of blessed memory. But I also liked the recipe because it was so similar to the way we tackle strawberry shortcake in Maine.

There are, of course, other ways of making strawberry shortcake. I’ve seen recipes in February, targeted to Valentine’s Day, that involve a package of supermarket pound cake, a basket of stout, bland, tough red strawberries from a California greenhouse, and a spray can of Cool Whip, the ingredients of which are: Water, Corn Syrup, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil (Coconut and Palm Kernel Oils), Skim Milk, Contains less than 2% or Light Cream, Sodium Caseinate (from Milk), Natural and Artificial Flavor, Xanthan and Guar Gums, Modified Food Starch, Polysorbate 60, Sorbitan Monostearate, Sodium Polyphosphate, Beta Carotene (color)).

I have even seen cake, strawberries, and Cool Whip, all assembled in an easy-to-pick-up display at my local supermarket—all the ingredients needed for a perfect strawberry shortcake. Even now, even in June.

But I don’t buy it.

Truth to tell, strawberry shortcake, the real deal, is so easy to prepare and so elegant to serve that I wonder why anyone would bother with all that industrial malarkey that serves only to cover tasteless strawberries with a strong overlay of artificial flavors. It is a travesty on the real thing. For the real thing, truly, you have to wait till strawberry season, wherever you are in the world, whether in Maine or Argentina or somewhere in between.

But I want to add an observation, based on my own experience of eating strawberries in many parts of the world, an observation, I confess, that is completely untested by science: strawberries are like wine grapes in that, while they can grow in many climates, they reach their peak of perfection only when certain factors are present. For strawberries, that means the north country where daylight lasts a good 12 hours at the time of the solstice, bathing the ripening fruit in strong sunlight while at night temperatures drop. Right now, day time temps on the coast of Maine are up in the low 70’s while at night they go down into the 50’s. This alternation between warm days and cool nights is a perfect environment for strawberries (as it is also for pinot noir grapes by the way) bringing them to their fullest peak of flavor. Which is where Maine strawberries are right now.