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Dessert

On Dessert Cakes in Generae

A sweet cake made with suet, icing sugar, egg whites, and flour, baked in a mold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

On Dessert Cakes in Generae

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the mold

  1. Finely chop the suet and melt it in a small saucepan over low heat.

  2. Strain the melted suet through a sieve into a cake mold, coating the inside.

  3. Drain excess grease and sprinkle icing sugar inside the mold to coat it.

  4. Prepare the mold with stiff paper around the edge to prevent overflow.

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the egg whites until firm and mix them lightly with the batter.

  2. Gradually add the two types of flour to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Place the mold on a baking sheet with wood ashes and bake in a preheated moderate oven (350°F / 175°C).

  2. Keep the oven door closed while baking.

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 + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Beef + flourtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Beef + sugartop 37% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,435 recipes

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

Beef and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,677 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

Beef or veal suet
Provides fat that gives the cake its rich, moist crumb and coats the mold.
Egg whites (in the method)
Whisked until firm, they add lightness and help the cake rise and set.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Icing sugar
Sweetens the cake and, sprinkled in the mold, helps form a light coating on the outside.

The step that matters

Keep the oven door closed while baking. Opening the door drops the oven temperature and can cause a cake's rising structure to collapse or set unevenly, so the cake may sink or turn out dense.

“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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