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Dessert

Blackberry Shortcake

A baked shortcake made with butter, flour, baking powder, milk, water, white sauce, mushrooms, and blackberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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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 ↓

Blackberry Shortcake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Dust the inside of the tin centers with salt and pepper.

Make the mushroom white sauce

  1. Peel the mushroom caps, sprinkle with lemon juice, and sauté in butter until golden.

  2. Remove the mushrooms and prepare a cup of white sauce, adding the mushrooms and seasoning to taste.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Work in 1/3 cup of butter with floured fingers.

  3. Add the milk and water mixture to form a soft dough.

  4. Spread the dough in two buttered pans and smooth with a knife or spoon.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake until browned, then butter the under crust and layer with blackberries.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + milktop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,231 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-hexanal (fruit).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Mushroom + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Blackberries
Provide the fruit flavour and juicy layer between the shortcake crusts.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the crust brown in the pan.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough so the shortcake rises and stays light.
Milk and water
Hydrates the flour so it forms a soft dough that bakes into a tender base.
Button mushroom caps
Add savoury, meaty flavour and body to the white sauce.

The step that matters

Work in 1/3 cup of butter with floured fingers. Rubbing fat into flour coats the flour particles and leaves pockets of fat that separate layers as they bake, so the dough should stay crumbly until the liquid is added rather than becoming greasy or overworked.

“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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