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Breakfast Shortcake

A baked shortcake made with flour, lard, butter, and sweet milk, layered with a creamy meat and potato mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Breakfast Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar.

  2. Mix the sifted ingredients in a bowl.

  3. Rub in the lard and butter.

  4. Add enough sweet milk to form a stiff dough.

  5. Roll the dough to less than ½ inch thick.

Bake and make the filling

  1. Bake the rolled dough in light layer cake pans at 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a skillet, heat the chopped meat and potato with 1 tablespoon of butter, ½ cup of water, 1 cup of milk, ¼ teaspoon of salt, and a pinch of pepper.

  3. Thicken the mixture with 1 teaspoon of flour and 1 teaspoon of butter rubbed together.

Assemble and serve

  1. Split the baked cakes.

  2. Butter the split cakes.

  3. Spread the creamed meat mixture between the layers.

  4. Reserve one layer to add berries, peaches, prunes, or other fruit.

  5. Sprinkle sugar over the fruit while hot.

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. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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 structure of the dough so the cakes hold their shape when baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and become light.
Lard
Shortens the dough, making the cakes tender and crumbly rather than tough.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness in the dough and helps thicken the filling.
Meat
Forms the savory filling that is spread between the cake layers.
Potato
Adds body and thickness to the creamed meat filling.

The step that matters

Roll the dough to less than ½ inch thick. Thin dough bakes through quickly and evenly at high heat, giving light, tender layers; thicker dough can stay doughy in the centre and bake unevenly.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, milk, meat, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Sweet potatofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, milk, meat, pepper. 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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