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Dessert

On Dessert Cakes in General

A simple batter of butter, sugar, flour, eggs, currants and flavouring baked into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

On Dessert Cakes in General

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a basin.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the flour and eggs.

  4. Fold in the currants and flavouring.

Bake and cool

  1. Fill small, greased, deep pans or heart-shaped tins with the batter.

  2. Dredge the surfaces with sugar.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until light in color.

  4. Turn the cakes out onto a wire tray to cool.

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 + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + vanillatop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,050 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cakes a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, creamed with butter, helps build a light texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture while helping the cakes rise.
Currants
Add pockets of fruit sweetness and chew throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar together traps air bubbles that expand in the oven and lighten the crumb. Under-creamed butter yields dense cakes, while over-mixing after the flour is added toughens them.

Swap the currant

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

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

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