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Dessert

Drop-cakes

Drop cakes are small, shallow cakes baked from a simple batter, greased and topped with sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Spread and sugar match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 260 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Drop-cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Grease small, shallow muffin rings and biscuit pans with butter.

Bake

  1. Place a teaspoonful of cake mixture in each muffin ring.

  2. Sprinkle fine sugar over the top of each.

  3. Bake until they are brown and done.

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. Spread + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together260 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Spread + buttertop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together236 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cake mixture
Forms the body of each drop cake, so it should be one that spreads easily.
Fine sugar
Sprinkled on top, it adds sweetness and helps the surface brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until brown and done. Baking long enough sets the batter and browns the surface, but the record gives no visual or timing cue, so cooks may pull them too early or leave them too long.

“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.

More drop cakes recipes

Rye 35Ginger 25Wheat 9Cornmeal 8Oatmeal 8Chocolate 7 See all 98 →

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