Skip to main content
Dessert

Our Grandmothers' Shortcake

A light, buttery cake made with flour, milk, water, baking powder, salt, shortening, and butter, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Our Grandmothers' Shortcake

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Sift the baking powder and salt three times with the flour to avoid lumps.

  2. Chop the shortening into the flour until it resembles fine sand.

  3. Wet the mixture with milk and water using a chopper until the dough is manageable.

Shape and bake

  1. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and roll it out to ½ inch thick.

  2. Fit the dough into greased jelly‑cake tins, trimming ragged edges.

  3. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Carefully split the cakes, butter them while hot, and cut into triangles.

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. Milk + buttertop 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 cakes as its starch sets during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the shortcake rises and becomes light.
Shortening
Coats flour particles to create a tender, flaky crumb rather than a tough one.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form dough and adds richness and browning from milk sugars.
Butter
Adds flavor and moisture when spread on the hot cakes after splitting.

The step that matters

Chop the shortening into the flour until it resembles fine sand.. Fat must stay in small distinct pieces coated in flour. Overworking it blends the fat in fully, which makes the crumb tough instead of tender and flaky.

“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 shortcake recipes

Strawberry 339Peach 45Orange 33Fruit 18Huckleberry 15Lemon 14 See all 56 →

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes