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Dessert

Light Short-cake

A quick shortcake made with flour, salt, baking soda, milk or cold water, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Light 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 mixing bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking soda (or cream of tartar and baking soda).

  3. Chop the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles yellow meal.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into three parts and roll each part into an oblong shape, ⅜ to ½ inch thick.

  2. Fit the rolled dough into buttered sheet pans and bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

  3. If not browned and done, continue baking while watching closely.

Serve

  1. Cut the baked sheets into strips with a thin, sharp knife, split, and butter while hot.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 dough once it is mixed with liquid and baked.
Butter
Cut into the flour to create a tender, flaky texture and adds richness.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the dough, adding moisture and richness to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the dough to release gas, helping the shortcake rise.

The step that matters

Watching the bake after the timed period. Shortcake is thin, so it can go from pale to over-browned quickly. Checking for color and doneness after the timed bake prevents dry, burnt edges while ensuring the center is fully baked.

“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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