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Dessert

Another Madeleine Cake. No. 2.

A light sponge cake made with flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and butter, baked in a hot oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Another Madeleine Cake. No. 2.

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Sift the flour and sugar together into a bowl.

  2. Break the eggs and add them two at a time, stirring with a spatula until smooth.

  3. Gently melt the butter for 1 minute.

  4. Add the flour mixture to the butter, ensuring the butter is not too hot.

  5. Fill the mixture into small fancy molds using a spoon.

Bake

  1. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°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.

  1. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Vanilla + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Provides the structure that holds the cake's shape as it sets.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crumb brown in the oven.
Eggs
Add structure and lift, and help bind the batter into a smooth mixture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving a tender texture and moist crumb.
Vanilla extract
Adds aroma and a warm, rounded flavour to the cake.

The step that matters

Add the flour mixture to the butter while the butter is not too hot. If melted butter is too hot, it can scramble or partly cook the eggs and deflate the batter. Warm but not hot butter blends smoothly and keeps the crumb tender and even.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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