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Dessert

Shrewsbury Cakes

A sweet biscuit made with sugar, flour, coriander, butter, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Shrewsbury Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Mix sugar, flour, and coriander seeds in a bowl, then sift the mixture together.

  2. Add melted butter, eggs, and brandy; mix well.

  3. Knead the dough until smooth.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough thin and cut into shapes.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until lightly golden, without discoloring.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + coriandertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,973 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
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown lightly.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure to the cakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown when baked.

The step that matters

Bake until lightly golden. Thin cut shapes can over-brown quickly because sugar caramelizes and browns at high oven heat. Pulling them when lightly golden keeps them tender and avoids a bitter, discolored edge.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Corianderthe original

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