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English and French Shortbread

Two old British shortbread recipes: an English version topped with lemon peel and caraway comfits, and a French version made with ammonia and peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Wells, Robert · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and bread match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 11,363 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Thoroughly mix and rub all together till of a nice mellow colour and easy to work.

  2. Rub the butter in the flour, make a bay, put in the eggs, sugar, and ammonia. Beat them well with your hand, then draw in the flour and butter.

  3. Make all into a dough, weigh at 12 ozs., chaff them up round.

  4. Mix as for Scotch Shortbread.

Shape and bake

  1. Weigh off the size required, and shape into square or round pieces.

  2. Dock them on the top, notch them round the sides, put on clean dry tins, and bake in a moderate oven.

  3. Pin out a good breadth, mark them off into eight, place a piece of peel on each, and bake in good oven.

  4. Ornament the tops with designs of neatly-cut lemon peel and caraway comfits.

  5. Cut the marked pieces with a sharp knife after they are baked.

By Wells, Robert. 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Milk + breadtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,363 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Egg + breadtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together22,584 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Biscuit + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together871 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Milk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together76,993 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 76,993 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with the fat.
Butter (in the method)
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the dough and give it richness.
Sugar (in the method)
Adds sweetness and helps the shortbread brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Cut the marked pieces after baking. Shortbread is brittle when hot and crumbles easily, so the pieces are marked before baking and cut cleanly only once they have been baked and are firm enough to hold their shape.

Flavor stand-ins for the orange

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, biscuit, flour, bread):

  1. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  2. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  3. Figbetter flavor fit
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, biscuit, flour, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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 shortbread recipes

Scotch 71Scottish 10Almond 9Cookies 8Biscuits 5Orange 4 See all 61 →

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