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Dessert

Shrewsbury Cakes

A sweet biscuit made with butter, sugar, flour, cinnamon, mace, and egg, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon 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

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat together the butter and caster sugar until creamy.

  2. Add the egg and pounded cinnamon and mace, and mix well.

  3. Gradually stir in the flour until smooth, avoiding lumps.

Shape the biscuits

  1. Flour a board and turn the dough out onto it.

  2. Flour a rolling pin and roll the dough as thin as possible.

  3. Dip a cutter or wine glass in flour and cut the dough into biscuits.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease a baking tin with butter and place the cakes on it.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes until light brown.

  3. The cakes are ready to serve.

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 + cinnamontop 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 add richness and a tender, short texture.
Caster sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it cream to a light base.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough once it is mixed in.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the flour until smooth, avoiding lumps.. Adding flour slowly lets it absorb into the butter and egg mixture evenly. Dumping it in at once creates lumps of dry flour that stay in the dough and make the texture uneven.

Swap the mace

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

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

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