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Dessert

Short Cake

A short cake made from flour, butter, soda or yeast, salt, and water, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour and yeast powder together, or sift the flour, add the salt, and mix the lard or butter thoroughly together, rubbing between your hands until there is no lump left.

  2. Add sufficient tepid water to make a nice, rather stiff dough.

  3. Roll out the dough into a thin sheet about half an inch thick.

  4. Criss-cross the dough with a knife lightly in diamond shapes.

Bake and serve

  1. Set the dough in the oven and bake for about fifteen minutes until light brown.

  2. Bring the cake to the table, split open, butter it, and eat while hot.

Richer variation

  1. Use a quarter of a pound of butter and two well-beaten eggs, and instead of water use sour milk or butter-milk if using soda, or sweet milk if using yeast powder.

  2. Mix the dough in the same manner as the plain version.

  3. Divide the dough into two portions, one for the upper crust and one for the lower crust.

  4. Sprinkle the fruit thickly between the two crusts.

  5. Bake until the dough is soft and crisp.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

684Calories
19 gProtein
18 gFat
108 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

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. See the original page.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 structure of the dough that holds the shortcake together.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich, and helps it brown.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Rubbing the fat into the flour. The fat must be worked in until no lumps remain so it coats the flour particles. This limits gluten development and keeps the shortcake tender and crumbly rather than tough.

“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.

More shortcake recipes

Strawberry 339Peach 45Orange 33Fruit 18Huckleberry 15Lemon 14 See all 56 →

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