Name: Heart Cakes
Ingredients: ½ pound butter; 4 egg yolks; 2 egg whites; ¾ pound sifted sugar; ¾ pound dried flour; 2 teaspoons orange flower water; ¾ pound currants; 1 ounce candied orange and citron

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Heart Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

Cream the butter in a bowl using your hands.
Add the egg yolks and beaten egg whites, mixing well.
Stir in the sifted sugar and dried flour until combined.
Add the orange flower water, currants, and candied orange and citron, mixing until smooth.

Bake

Pour the batter into heart-shaped tins.
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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Orange + curranttop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,034 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,856 recipes

Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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: Creams with the sugar to give the cakes a rich, tender crumb and fat-based flavour.
Egg yolks: Add richness, moisture and colour, and help bind the batter.
Egg whites: Add air and lift, helping the cakes rise and turn light in texture.
Sifted sugar: Sweetens the cakes and helps tenderise the crumb as it creams with the butter.
Dried flour: Provides the structure that sets the batter as the cakes bake.
Currants: Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

Swap the orange

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Orangethe original

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