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Dessert

Raspberry Short Cake

A baked cake made from flour, butter, and water, filled with raspberry jam and served with sweetened cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Raspberry Short Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  3. Rub in the butter or lard until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

  4. Add enough water to form a soft dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into cakes, scoring the tops in squares or diamonds.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

Make the raspberry filling and serve

  1. Once baked, split the cakes open and spread with butter.

  2. Mash the raspberries and mix with sugar and water to create a juice.

  3. Layer the raspberries between the two halves of the cake and serve with sweetened cream.

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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 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).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once mixed with liquid.
Butter or lard
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and a crumbly texture to the cakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cakes rise and become light.
Raspberries
Provide tart fruit flavor and juice that soaks into the split cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the raspberries and balances their natural tartness.

The step that matters

Rub in the butter or lard until coarse crumbs form. Fat coated onto flour particles limits gluten development, so overworking or melting the fat makes the cakes tough rather than tender and flaky.

“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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