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Dessert

Short Bread

A quick bread made with flour, lard, butter, baking powder, salt, and cold milk, baked on a griddle.

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 ↓

Short Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt together.

  2. Rub the butter and lard into the flour until well combined.

  3. Add cold milk gradually until the mixture reaches the consistency of biscuit dough.

Cook

  1. Bake on a griddle over medium heat.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the quickbread as its proteins hydrate and set.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, lifting the dough so it rises and becomes light.
Lard
Coats flour particles to shorten gluten strands, giving a tender, crumbly texture.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor while also contributing to a tender, crumbly texture.
Cold milk
Provides the moisture that hydrates the flour and binds the dough together.

The step that matters

Adding the cold milk gradually. Too much milk or overworking the dough develops gluten, making the quickbread tough. Stop adding milk once the dough just holds together like biscuit dough.

“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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