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Dessert

Whole Wheat Shortcake

A shortcake made with whole wheat flour, butter, milk, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wheat and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,418 recipes. Both carry (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, melon. The science ↓

Whole Wheat 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

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

  2. In a bowl, mix the whole wheat flour, Franklin whole wheat flour, salt, and baking powder.

  3. Rub in the cold butter until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

Shape and bake

  1. Add the milk and mix until a smooth dough forms.

  2. Divide the dough into quarters and roll out to ½ inch thick.

  3. Place the rolled dough in oiled pie tins, brushing the top of the first layer with oil.

  4. Bake for about 20 minutes until golden; each layer should lift off easily.

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. Wheat + milktop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Wheat + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,373 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Wheat + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Whole wheat flour
Provides the structure of the dough and the wheat flavour of the shortcake.
Franklin whole wheat flour
Adds more flour structure to the dough, giving body to the layers.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the layers rise and become tender.
Butter
Coats flour particles when rubbed in, giving a crumbly, tender texture.
Milk
Hydrates the flour to form the dough and adds richness and browning.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough to an even thickness. Dough rolled to uneven thickness bakes unevenly, so thin spots can dry out while thick spots stay doughy. Even layers bake through at the same rate and release cleanly from the tins.

“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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