Skip to main content
Dessert

Shrewsbury Cakes

A buttery, sweet cake flavored with cinnamon and caraway, baked into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 188 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Shrewsbury Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA rather slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a rather slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Melt the butter and add the sugar.

  2. Beat in the eggs until very light.

  3. Mix in the ground cinnamon and caraway seeds.

  4. Gradually add the flour to form a paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the paste thin, prick it, and cut into small cakes.

  2. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C).

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. Cinnamon + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Caraway + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Adds richness and fat, giving the cakes a tender, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Beaten until very light, they add structure and lift to the paste.
Flour
Forms the paste that holds the cakes together as they bake.
White sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs until very light. Beating incorporates air into the eggs and butter mixture, which helps the cakes stay light rather than dense. Under-beating leaves a heavier texture.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits about as well
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Clovefits about as well

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

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes