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Dessert

Shrewsbury Cakes

Shrewsbury cakes are small sweet cakes made with powdered sugar, flour, spices, eggs, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Shrewsbury Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Sift the powdered sugar into the flour.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg or cinnamon and caraway seeds, then mix thoroughly.

  3. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately, then add to the mixture.

  4. Stir in enough melted butter to form a stiff paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the pastry to 1/8 inch thick and cut into round cakes.

  2. Prick the cakes and place them on floured baking sheets.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 15 to 20 minutes.

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. Nutmeg + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once combined with butter and eggs.
Melted butter
Binds the dough into a stiff paste and adds richness and tenderness.
Eggs
Add moisture and richness, and help bind the dough together.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine texture that blends smoothly into the flour.

The step that matters

Stir in the melted butter to a stiff paste. Adding too much butter or working the dough too long makes it greasy and spreads the cakes during baking. Stopping when the dough is stiff keeps the cakes thick and crisp at the edges.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Carawaythe original
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

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