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Dessert

Sweet Short-Cake

A light, sweet cake made with powdered sugar, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder, and cream, baked in a shortcake tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Sweet Short-Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the powdered sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Sift the flour with the baking powder and fold it into the mixture.

  5. Stir in the cream until well combined.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into jelly cake tins and bake until done.

  2. Once baked, layer the cakes on top of each other, sprinkling each layer with powdered sugar.

  3. Cut through the layers like a pie and serve in saucers with sweetened cream poured over.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting the batter as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and turn lighter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, adds air and a fine texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.

The step that matters

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Adding eggs gradually lets each one emulsify fully into the creamed butter and sugar. Adding them too fast can cause the batter to curdle and lose air, leading to a denser cake.

“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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