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Dessert

Shrewsbury Cakes

A sweet biscuit made with flour, butter, currants, sugar, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Shrewsbury Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  2. Add the currants and sifted sugar, mixing thoroughly.

  3. Gradually add new milk until the mixture is moist but not too wet.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough to a thickness of about ½ inch.

  2. Cut out shapes using a cutter.

  3. Flour the baking sheet before placing the cakes on it.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until lightly golden.

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. 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).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Currant + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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 that holds the cakes together.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cakes tender and rich in texture.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the cakes brown lightly in the oven.
Milk
Moistens the flour so the dough can be rolled and shaped.

The step that matters

Gradually add new milk until the mixture is moist but not too wet. Flour absorbs liquid at different rates, and too much milk makes the dough sticky and hard to cut, while too little leaves it crumbly. Adding milk slowly lets you stop at a dough that rolls cleanly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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