Skip to main content
Dessert

Scotch Parkin

A sweet shortbread cookie made with flour, meal, lard, spices, golden syrup, brown sugar, baking soda, and ammonia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Scotch Parkin

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix all the dry ingredients together.

  2. Work in the golden syrup and knead into a paste.

  3. Roll out the paste to a quarter inch thick.

  4. Cut the rolled dough into rounds.

Bake

  1. Optionally, place a few shredded almonds on top before baking.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Syrup + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + syruptop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,540 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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 dough once mixed with the other ingredients.
Medium meal
Adds a coarser grain texture to the dough.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the biscuit short.
Golden syrup
Binds the dry ingredients into a paste and adds sweetness and moisture.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the dough and help it rise and spread lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Rolling the paste to a quarter inch thick. Even thickness makes the rounds bake at the same rate, so thin spots do not burn while thicker centres stay underdone.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, syrup, sugar):

  1. Chestnutfits about as well
  2. Almondthe original
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Cashew nutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, syrup, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes