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Dessert

Elderberry Blossom Cake

A fried cake made from elderberry blossoms coated in batter, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, served hot with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Elderberry and cinnamon share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

Elderberry Blossom Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Whisk together the eggs, milk, and a pinch of salt in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add flour until the batter resembles that for apple fritters.

  3. Pick over the elderberry blossoms to remove leaves and insects.

  4. Cut off the stems of the blossoms with scissors. Divide large bunches if necessary.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the bunches of elderberry blossoms into the batter.

  2. Heat lard in a frying pan and fry the dipped blossoms.

  3. Once golden, remove from the pan, sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon, and serve hot with cream.

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. Elderberry + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and hold its coating around the blossoms when fried.
Flour
Forms the body of the batter so it coats the blossoms and turns crisp when fried.
Milk
Thins the batter to a coating consistency and adds moisture to the crust.
Lard
Conducts heat for frying, browning the batter to a golden crust and adding richness.

The step that matters

Frying the dipped blossoms. Lard must be hot enough before the battered blossoms go in. If it is too cool, the batter absorbs fat and turns greasy instead of setting into a crisp, golden coating.

Swap the elderberry

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

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

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