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Dessert

Cup Cakes

Cupcakes are small cakes baked in individual cups, made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, and optional flavorings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cup Cakes

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).

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk and any flavoring you desire.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and cream of tartar, then add to the mixture.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into buttered gem pans or drop tablespoonfuls onto flat buttered baking sheets.

  2. If desired, add currants or raisins to the batter before baking.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure, while beaten whites trap air that lifts the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cupcakes and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cupcakes together as they set.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour and dissolves the sugar.
Cream of tartar
An acid that reacts with the leavening to help the cupcakes rise and stabilizes the egg whites.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Beaten whites hold trapped air that gives the cupcakes their lift. Stirring vigorously deflates the foam, leaving dense, flat cupcakes.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cream, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cream, almond. 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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