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Dessert

Queen Cakes or Droj)s

A lemon currant cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, currants, and lemon zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Queen Cakes or Droj)s

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. Melt the butter in a bowl until creamy.

  2. Add the powdered sugar and lemon zest, stirring for 15 minutes with a whisk until light and white.

  3. Break the eggs into a separate bowl, adding 3 or 4 at a time, stirring well after each addition and allowing 5 minutes between each.

  4. Once all eggs are mixed in, stir in the washed and picked currants.

  5. Sift in the flour and stir for 5 minutes.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into cakes the size of half a crown and place them on six sheets of paper.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they set in the oven.
Unsalted butter
Adds fat that gives the cakes a tender, rich texture.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps trap air when beaten, lightening the crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter as they set.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy fruit through the cakes.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs gradually. Adding eggs a few at a time, mixing well between additions, keeps the butter and sugar mixture emulsified. Adding them too quickly can make the batter curdle and lose the air it has built up, leading to a denser cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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