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Dessert

Shrewsbury Cakes

A shortbread-like cake made with flour, butter, sugar, egg, spice, and a little salt, baked until pale brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Shrewsbury 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

  1. In a bowl, cream together the butter and castor sugar using a spoon or your hands.

  2. Add the egg and spice or lemon essence, mixing well.

  3. Gradually incorporate the flour until fully combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Turn the dough onto a well-floured surface, flour the top, and roll it out thinly.

  2. Cut the dough into rounds and place them on a greased baking sheet.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 10 minutes until pale brown.

  4. Allow the cakes to cool on one side.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cakes a tender, rich texture.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps create a fine, tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds moisture and richness to the cakes.
Mace or cinnamon
Adds warm spice aroma to the dough.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thinly. Thin dough bakes quickly and evenly, so the cakes turn pale brown and crisp rather than thick and doughy. Flouring the surface keeps the dough from sticking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Macethe original

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