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Dessert

★ Scotch Short Bread--no Eggs

A butter, sugar, and flour shortbread baked slowly, optionally with caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Evora Bucknum Perkins · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

★ Scotch Short Bread--no Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream butter, add ½ cup granulated or brown sugar, ½ cup powdered sugar, 1 teaspoon caraway seed (optional), and 2 cups flour.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll dough to about 1 inch thick, shape to fit tin, crinkle edges, press with fork or cut with pastry jagger, slide onto tin, prick lightly with fork.

  2. Bake in a slow oven for 1 hour; or roll ½ inch thick and bake ½ hour only.

Variations

  1. Optional variations: replace butter with oil and ¼ teaspoon salt; use one cup sugar with ½ cup butter or oil; use 1 cup butter or oil with ½ cup sugar; brown sugar is suitable.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

657Calories
14 gProtein
18 gFat
108 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 4 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

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

By Evora Bucknum Perkins. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, 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. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Provides fat that makes the shortbread rich, tender and crumbly.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the shortbread together.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the shortbread brown lightly while baking.

The step that matters

Baking time and thickness. Dough rolled thicker needs the full hour in a slow oven, while thinner dough bakes in half an hour. Mismatching thickness and time leaves the shortbread either raw in the centre or overbaked and hard.

“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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