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Dessert

Shrewsbury Cakes

A buttery shortbread-like biscuit made with butter, sugar, cinnamon, mace, eggs, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Shrewsbury Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl until smooth.

  2. Add the finely pounded sugar, cinnamon, mace, and eggs; mix until light and fluffy.

  3. Gradually add the sifted flour until a stiff paste forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into shapes using a large glass or lid.

  2. Place on buttered baking sheets and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) until golden brown.

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. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give a smooth, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown as they bake.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and lighten the dough when beaten in.
Flour
Forms the stiff paste that gives the cakes their body and shape.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Adding flour in small amounts lets it blend evenly into the butter and eggs. Dumping it in at once can leave lumps and make the dough tough, so the cakes lose their short, crumbly texture.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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