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Dessert

Shrewsbury Cakes

Small biscuits made with butter, sugar, flour, caraway seeds, cinnamon, and egg, baked until pale brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Caraway and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 188 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Shrewsbury Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the flour, caraway seeds, and enough beaten egg to form a stiff dough.

  3. Let the dough stand in a cool place.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough on a well-floured surface and cut into small biscuits.

  2. Place the biscuits on a greased baking sheet and bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) until pale brown.

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. Caraway + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Creamed with sugar to give the biscuits a rich, tender texture and fat flavour.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once bound with egg.
Egg
Binds the flour and butter into a stiff dough that holds its shape.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for sweetness and a fine, crumbly texture.

The step that matters

Letting the dough stand in a cool place. Chilling firms the butter so the dough stays stiff enough to roll and cut cleanly, and it stops the biscuits from spreading in the oven.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

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