Skip to main content
Dessert

Scotch Short-cake

A currant-filled shortcake made with flour, butter, sugar, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Scotch Short-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pick and wash the currants, then dry them on a dish before the fire or on a stove.

  2. Dredge the dried fruit with flour to prevent clumping.

  3. Sift the flour and spread it to dry by the fire.

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter in a clean saucepan over low heat, ensuring it does not burn.

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour and powdered sugar.

  3. Pour the warm melted butter into the flour and sugar mixture, stirring to form a soft dough without adding water.

  4. Add the fruit gradually, stirring well between each addition, then mix in the heaped teaspoon of spice and brandy.

  5. Flour a surface, knead the dough briefly, then divide it in half.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll each half to about 1 inch thick and cut into desired shapes using a jaggering iron.

  2. Place the cakes in buttered square pans and bake 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Melted butter binds the flour and sugar into a soft, rich dough and adds richness.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough and sets as the cakes bake.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and fine texture to the dough and helps it brown.
Currants
Add chewy texture and sweetness scattered through the dough.

The step that matters

Melting the butter gently. Butter that burns turns bitter and dark, and overheated butter can separate, so it must be melted over low heat and kept warm but not hot before it is poured into the dry ingredients.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, flour, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter, sugar, brandy. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes