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Dessert

Heart Cakes

A sweet cake made with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, currants, and optional rose water or lemon, baked in heart-shaped pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Heart Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter with some rose water.

  2. Beat in the flour, sugar, and eggs until well combined.

  3. Add the washed and dried currants.

  4. Butter small heart-shaped pans and pour in the mixture.

Bake and ice

  1. Grate sugar over the top and bake until done, either in a Dutch oven or regular oven.

  2. For icing, beat the egg whites to stiff peaks.

  3. Gradually add the sugar and mix in the lemon juice or rose water.

  4. Beat until light and white, then pour over the cake and smooth with a spoon.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cakes a rich, tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it sets in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown on the surface as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks to form a light, white icing that sets as it cools.

The step that matters

Beat the icing until light and white. Egg whites must be whipped to stiff peaks before the sugar is added, and the icing must be beaten well so it holds air and spreads smoothly. Under-beaten icing stays runny and sinks into the cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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