Name: Scotch Cake, or Short Bread
Ingredients: 1 peck (about 8 quarts) of flour; 3 pounds of fresh butter; less than 1 pint of yeast; carraway seeds or sweetmeats of choice; warm water (if needed)

Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Scotch Cake, or Short Bread

Ingredients

1 peck (about 8 quarts) of flour
3 pounds of fresh butter
less than 1 pint of yeast
carraway seeds or sweetmeats of choice
warm water (if needed)

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 dough

Make a hole in the middle of the flour.
Melt the butter and mix it with the yeast.
Add caraway seeds or sweetmeats to the mixture.
Work the mixture well with your hands.
If the dough is too dry, add warm water.

Shape and bake

Roll out the dough into cakes of any shape.
Prick the cakes with a fork.
Bake the cakes on floured paper at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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.

Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour: Forms the main structure of the dough once worked with liquid and fat.
Fresh butter: Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown.
Yeast: Produces gas that leavens the dough and gives it a lighter texture.

“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.