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Dessert

Chocol4te Cup Cakes

A sweet baked dessert made with powdered sugar, butter, flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, cinnamon, eggs, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Chocol4te Cup Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, rub together the powdered sugar, flour, and butter until well combined.

  3. Add the baking soda, cream of tartar, and cinnamon to the mixture.

  4. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and milk together until well mixed.

Make the batter

  1. Combine the wet ingredients with the dry ingredients, mixing just enough to combine.

  2. Pour the batter into cupcake liners and bake until golden brown.

Finish

  1. Let cool and frost with chocolate icing.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 cupcakes together as they bake.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to produce gas that helps the cupcakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that works with baking soda to lift the batter and stabilize texture.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps bind the batter while contributing to browning.

The step that matters

Mixing the wet and dry ingredients. Mixing just until combined keeps gluten development low, so the cupcakes stay tender. Overmixing toughens the batter and can make the cupcakes dense, while the leavening reacts best when the batter is handled gently.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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