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Dessert

New England Short Cake

A quick short cake made with flour, butter, milk, and leavening, baked until golden and served with butter or fruit spread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

New England Short Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar with the flour and sift twice.

  2. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine meal.

  3. Alternatively, melt the butter and add it hot with the milk.

  4. Gradually add the milk, mixing and cutting with a knife.

Shape and bake

  1. Divide the dough into two parts and roll gently until about the size of a pie plate.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Cut around the edge.

  2. Tear open.

  3. Spread with softened butter.

  4. Optionally, add fruit spread if desired.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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 main structure of the shortcake as gluten develops when mixed with liquid.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and creates a flaky, layered texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds moisture to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce carbon dioxide, helping the shortcake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that reacts with baking soda to leaven the dough.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk, mixing and cutting with a knife. Adding liquid gradually and mixing lightly keeps the dough moist but not overworked. Too much mixing develops gluten, which makes the shortcake tough rather than tender.

“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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