Skip to main content
Dessert

Queen Cakes

A small round cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, water, and currants, baked at 400°F.

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

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

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Melt the butter in a preserving or earthen pan.

  2. Work the melted butter with your hand until it reaches the consistency of thick cream.

  3. Add the sifted sugar and beat for 1 minute.

  4. Add the eggs and water, then beat for 2 minutes.

  5. Mix in the flour and currants until combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour the mixture into small round tins.

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

  3. Let the cakes stand for 2-3 minutes, then gently knock the tin to release them.

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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides richness and a tender crumb as it is worked into the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps give the batter body and a fine texture.
Eggs
Add structure and help bind the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.

The step that matters

Working the melted butter to thick cream. Melted butter must be worked until it thickens to a cream-like consistency before the sugar is added. Properly thickened fat traps air and blends evenly with the sugar, giving a lighter, more uniform crumb. If it stays too thin, the batter will be dense and greasy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More queen cake recipes

Scotch 4 See all 62 →

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes