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Dessert

Simple Fruit Short-cake

A shortcake made with Graham flour, cornmeal, thin cream, baking powder, and filled with mashed fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Simple Fruit Short-cake

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix the Graham flour and cornmeal.

  3. Add the thin cream and baking powder, and combine until a dough forms.

  4. Roll out the dough to less than 1 inch thick.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake on plates or pans until golden.

  2. Cut the cakes open and fill with your choice of mashed fruit.

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 + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  2. Flour + appletop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,140 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + appletop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,089 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Graham flour
Forms the main body of the dough and gives the cakes a coarse, hearty texture.
Cornmeal
Adds grainy texture and structure to the dough alongside the flour.
Thin cream
Moistens the dry ingredients so they combine into a dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Roll out the dough to less than 1 inch thick. Rolling the dough thinner than 1 inch helps it bake through evenly and turn golden instead of remaining gummy or doughy in the centre.

Swap the apple

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream. 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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