Skip to main content
Main

Short Cake Toast

A quick baked toast made from shortcake dough with butter and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Colbrath, M. Tarbox · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Short Cake Toast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix salt, soda, and cream‑tartar into flour.

  2. Rub the butter into this mixture until dry and powdery.

  3. Add the milk, and work the whole together.

  4. Sprinkle your board with flour, turn out the dough, work it very lightly, with as little flour as possible, as this should be soft dough.

  5. Divide your dough into three or four parts.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll each part nearly half an inch thick, and fit to oblong sheet pans.

  2. Bake until nicely browned.

Serve

  1. Cut into squares, split each, butter while hot, and place them in a pile, like toast. Serve at once.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

755Calories
21 gProtein
21 gFat
120 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 5 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
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.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 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. Milk + creamtop 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 structure of the dough once mixed with the liquid and fat.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderize the crumb and add richness.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and binds the dough together.
Soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the dough rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that reacts with the soda to leaven the dough.

The step that matters

Work the dough very lightly. Overworking soft dough with extra flour or heavy handling develops gluten and dries the dough, making the shortcake tough rather than tender.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes