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Dessert

Peach Short Cake

A baked peach dessert with a buttery shortcake base and sliced peaches.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Peach Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice the peaches thinly, then sprinkle with sugar to taste.

  2. In a bowl, combine flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.

  3. Cream the butter and mix in the sugar.

  4. Beat the egg yolks until foamy and add to the flour mixture.

Make and bake the shortcake

  1. Make a well in the flour and add the butter, sugar, egg yolks, and milk.

  2. Mix to form a batter, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  3. Bake immediately until done, then split and butter each half.

Serve

  1. Fill each half liberally with the prepared peaches.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Peach + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together781 recipes

    Shared aroma: phellandrene (minty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 shortcake as its proteins set during baking.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, and the whipped whites lighten the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda reacts and helps the shortcake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas that leavens the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the shortcake.
Peaches
Provide the fresh fruit filling, with sugar drawing out their juice.

The step that matters

Bake immediately until done. Baking soda and cream of tartar start reacting as soon as the batter is mixed, and the whipped egg whites trap air that expands in the oven. Delaying the bake lets gas escape and the shortcake comes out flat and dense.

Swap the peach

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, cream, butter, egg, milk):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, cream, butter, egg, milk. 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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