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 ↓
Fleed or Flead Cakes
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.
Make the dough
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
In a bowl, mix the flour and sugar together.
Cut in the butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.
Shape and bake
Roll out the dough to more than half an inch thick.
Cut the dough into small rounds using a cutter.
Place the rounds on a baking sheet and bake for 10 to 15 minutes until pale.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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
- Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
- Butter
- Adds fat that coats the flour and gives the shortbread its tender, crumbly texture.
The step that matters
Bake until pale. Sugar browns quickly at this temperature, so the shortbread can darken and turn bitter or dry if left in the oven too long. Pulling the rounds when they are pale keeps them tender.
“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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