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Dessert

To Make Queen Cakes

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, currants, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make Queen Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Beat and sift the sugar.

  2. Cream the butter until smooth.

  3. Add the sugar to the butter and mix well.

  4. Beat the egg whites for about 30 minutes until stiff.

  5. Mix the egg whites with the butter and sugar mixture.

  6. Beat the egg yolks for about 30 minutes and add to the mixture.

  7. Mix in the flour, spices, and currants.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the mixture into round cakes the size of a French roll.

  2. Place on sheet tins and bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) until done.

Finish

  1. Sprinkle a little sugar over the cakes before serving.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites are beaten to add air and lift, while yolks add richness and help bind the cake.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cakes a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Currants
Add pockets of fruit sweetness and chew throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites until stiff. Stiff whites hold air that lifts the batter as it bakes. Under-beaten whites give dense cakes, while over-beaten whites turn grainy and collapse when folded in.

Swap the currant

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

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

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