Name: Short Cakes
Ingredients: ½ pound fresh butter; 1½ cups milk; 1½ pounds all-purpose flour

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Short Cakes

Ingredients

½ pound fresh butter
1½ cups milk
1½ pounds all-purpose flour

Directions

Make the dough

Dissolve the butter in enough milk to make a paste with 1½ pounds of flour.
Roll out the paste to about ¼ inch thick.
Cut into large round cakes.

Cook and serve

Fry the cakes in a frying pan until golden brown.
Serve hot with butter.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter: Adds richness and fat, tenderising the paste and carrying flavour through the dough.
All-purpose flour: Forms the structure of the paste and holds the cakes together as they cook.
Milk: Moistens the flour so it forms a workable paste that can be rolled out.

“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.