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Dessert

Short Bread

A simple shortbread cookie made with flour, butter, sugar, almonds, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Short Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Gradually add the sugar and flour, mixing well with your hands.

  4. Knead until the mixture is crumbly.

  5. Add a little milk to form a dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough lightly and shape it into flat cakes.

  2. Use a knife to round the edges and sprinkle pounded almonds on top.

  3. Bake until nearly done, then mark the tops in squares.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Provides fat that makes the shortbread rich and tender.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cakes together once baked.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Knead until crumbly, then add only a little milk. Working the dough too much develops gluten and makes shortbread tough, while the butter should stay cool and coat the flour. Adding too much milk makes the dough sticky and spreads it while baking, so add it gradually.

“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.

More shortbread recipes

Scotch 71Scottish 10Almond 9Cookies 8Biscuits 5Orange 4 See all 61 →

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