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Dessert

Small Cakes

Small cakes made with eggs, sugar, almonds, citron, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Small Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs until light.

  2. Mix in the sugar, pounded almonds, chopped citron, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger.

  3. Add enough flour to make a batter that drops from a spoon without running.

  4. Beat the mixture for half an hour.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls onto greased baking sheets and place a piece of citron on each cake.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven 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.

  1. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs trap air and give the cakes their light, structured crumb.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the cakes brown as they bake.
Pounded almonds
Add richness, body and a nutty flavor to the batter.
Flour
Gives the batter enough body to hold its shape when dropped from a spoon.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture for half an hour. Long beating incorporates air into the egg-based batter, which lifts the cakes while baking. Under-beating leaves them dense, while the batter must still be thick enough to drop from a spoon without running.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Cashew nutfits about as well
  3. Chickpeafits about as well
  4. Chestnutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, clove, cinnamon, ginger, 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.

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