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Dessert

Small Cakes

Small cakes made with flour, cinnamon, sugar, jam, and butter, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Small Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Rub butter into the flour, cinnamon, and sugar.

  3. Roll out the mixture to 1/4 inch thick.

  4. Cut into stripes 3 inches wide and 2 stripes 1 inch wide.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place a little jam in the center of the broad stripe.

  2. Add little cross bars across the center of the jam.

  3. Wet the edges of the pastry and lay on the narrow stripes.

  4. Brush the top with a mixture of sugar and water.

  5. Bake for 20 minutes.

  6. Cut into fingers, ensuring one cross bar is on each cake.

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 + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Cinnamon and sugar 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the pastry that holds the jam in place.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to tenderize the pastry and add richness.
Egg
Binds the dough and helps it set and brown during baking.
Jam
Provides sweetness and a fruity filling that bakes into the centre.

The step that matters

Wetting the pastry edges before laying the narrow stripes. Water helps the pastry edges stick together so the jam stays sealed inside. Without a good seal, the filling can leak out and burn during baking.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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