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Dessert

Short Cake

A simple cake made with flour, butter, egg, milk, baking soda, cream of tartar, and salt, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  3. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Mix and bake

  1. Beat the egg and mix it with the milk.

  2. Stir the wet mixture into the dry ingredients.

  3. Pour the batter into a baking dish and bake for 20 to 30 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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 structure of the shortcake as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to create tender layers and a crumbly texture.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the batter while adding moisture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture for a soft crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the dough.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that activates the baking soda, helping the shortcake rise.

The step that matters

Rub in the butter until coarse crumbs form. Stopping when the butter is distributed as coarse crumbs keeps pieces of fat intact. As they melt in the oven they release steam and leave small pockets, giving a flaky, tender texture rather than a dense one.

“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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