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Dessert

Rye Short Cake

A short cake made from rye meal, wheat flour, lard, salt, baking powder, and sweet milk, baked to a golden crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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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 Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Combine one pint rye meal, one teaspoonful salt, one pint wheat flour, one tablespoonful lard well rubbed in, three heaping teaspoonfuls Star Crystal Baking Powder, and sweet milk enough to roll out.

  2. Bake one inch thick on a tin sheet for about forty minutes.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

899Calories
16 gProtein
27 gFat
148 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 9 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Lard1 tbsp (12.8g)115
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Apple1 medium (182g)95
Rye1 slice (32g)83
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Salt1 tsp (6g)0
Wheatnot in our table0
Waternot in our table0

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

By Clarke, Mary Lamson. [from old catalog]. 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. Rye + wheattop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together404 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

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

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

Rye meal
Adds an earthy flavor and a dense, tender crumb to the shortcake.
Wheat flour
Provides gluten for structure so the shortcake holds its shape.
Lard
Coats flour particles to limit gluten, keeping the texture tender and crumbly.
Star crystal baking powder
Releases gas as it bakes, lifting the dough so it rises.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rye, wheat, flour, sugar, butter. 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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