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Dessert

Short Cake Toast

A quick baked shortcake dough turned into layered toast.

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 Cake Toast

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. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Mix the salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar into the flour.

  3. Rub the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles dry powder.

  4. Add the milk (or cold water) and mix until combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Sprinkle flour on your work surface and turn out the dough.

  2. Work it very lightly.

  3. Divide the dough into three or four parts.

  4. Roll each part to about ½ inch thick.

  5. Fit the rolled dough onto oblong sheet pans.

  6. Bake until nicely browned.

Cut and serve

  1. Cut into squares and split each square.

  2. Butter while hot.

  3. Stack them like toast.

  4. Serve immediately.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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 once moistened and worked.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderize the crumb and add richness.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the dough rise.
Baking soda
Alkaline leavener that reacts with the acid to produce gas for rising.
Milk
Provides the liquid that hydrates the flour and binds the dough.

The step that matters

Work the dough very lightly. Overworking develops gluten in the flour, making the shortcake tough instead of tender. Handling gently and briefly keeps the texture soft and crumbly.

“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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