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Dessert

Queen Cakes, or Drops

A buttery, sweet cake with currants and lemon, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Queen Cakes, or Drops

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 raspings, 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.

  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 on sheets of paper.

  2. 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 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).

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
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps create a soft, fine crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, when beaten with butter, traps air that helps them rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they set.
Eggs
Bind the mixture, add structure as they set, and contribute richness and moisture.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs gradually. Adding eggs a few at a time, with time to mix between, keeps the butter and sugar emulsified. Dumping them in at once can cause the batter to curdle and lose the air it needs to rise well.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, 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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