Skip to main content
Dessert

Rye Shortcake

A quick rye and wheat flour shortcake with sweet milk, sour milk, sour cream, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Rye and wheat match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 404 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Rye Shortcake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Sift the rye flour with the sugar.

  2. Sift the wheat flour with the cream of tartar.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk.

  4. Fill a tumbler with sour milk.

Make the batter

  1. Stir the sour milk and sour cream gradually into the flour mixture.

  2. Add the beaten eggs. Mix well.

Bake

  1. Preheat a gem roll pan on the stove.

  2. Grease it with butter.

  3. Fill the pan nearly full.

  4. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

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

  4. Rye + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,320 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Rye flour
Gives the shortcake a tender, slightly earthy crumb with less gluten structure than wheat flour.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten structure so the shortcake holds its shape while it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas, lifting the batter.
Sour cream
Adds fat and moisture, producing a softer, richer crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk and cream of tartar to leaven the batter.

The step that matters

Stir the sour milk and sour cream gradually into the flour mixture. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets acid, so the batter should be mixed gently and baked promptly to keep the gas bubbles that make the shortcake rise.

“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.

You might also like

Wheat MuffinsWheat Muffins48 recipesWhole Wheat MuffinsWhole Wheat Muffins12 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes