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Dessert

Red Raspberry Shortcake

A shortcake made with flour, butter, baking powder, topped with raspberries and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Red Raspberry Shortcake

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.

Prepare the crust

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

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder, and butter until crumbly.

  3. Roll the dough thin and place it on a large pie plate.

  4. Bake until golden brown.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread butter between two layers of the baked crust.

  2. Fill with fresh raspberries that have been mixed with sugar and let sit for at least 30 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the crust as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crust and moistens the layers.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the crust rises and stays light.
Fresh raspberries
Provide tart fruit flavor and juice that soaks into the crust.
Sugar
Sweetens the raspberries and draws out their juice.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Browning comes from heat reacting with sugars and proteins in the dough. Underbaked crust stays pale and doughy, while overbaked crust turns dry and brittle, so watch the colour rather than the clock.

“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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