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Dessert

Shrewsbury Cakes

A buttery shortbread-like cake flavored with cinnamon, caraway seeds, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Shrewsbury Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

  2. Mix in the sugar, flour, cinnamon, caraway seeds, eggs, and rose water.

  3. Roll out the paste to ½ inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the cakes into shapes.

  2. Bake on tins in a 300°F (150°C) oven.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Cinnamon + rosetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together892 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Gives richness and a tender, crumbly texture once creamed.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cakes brown lightly while staying tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cut shapes together.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Caraway seeds
Add a warm, aromatic flavour to the cakes.

The step that matters

Roll out the paste to ½ inch thick. Even thickness lets the cakes bake at the same rate, so they cook through without some edges drying out or browning too quickly.

Swap the cinnamon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, egg, rose):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, rose. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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