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Dessert

Scottish Receipt for Shortbread

A Scottish shortbread made with flour, butter, sugar, citron, almonds, sea salt, baked into oblong cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Scottish Receipt for Shortbread

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Mix the sugar, citron, and almonds with the flour.

  3. Work in the cold butter until smooth and compact.

Shape the cakes

  1. Divide the dough into 4 or more pieces and roll each into an oblong shape on a floured surface.

  2. Prick the tops with a fork and press in thinly sliced orange and citron, along with caraway confections.

  3. Pinch the edges and place the cakes in floured tins.

Bake

  1. Bake for 20 minutes; they are done when they spring back after pressing.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. 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 dough that holds the shortbread together.
Unsalted butter
Provides fat that gives shortbread its tender, crumbly texture.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the shortbread brown lightly during baking.
Citron
Adds flavour and a candied fruit aroma to the dough.
Blanched almonds
Add nutty flavour and a little texture to the dough.

The step that matters

Work in the cold butter until smooth and compact. Cold butter rubbed into flour keeps fat in small pieces, so the shortbread stays tender and crumbly. Overworking warms the butter and develops gluten, which makes the texture tough.

“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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