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Dessert

Pate a LA Caknelle

A cake made from a cinnamon paste mixed with flour, butter, sugar, and yeast, baked into small cakes or tartlets.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Frances Crawford · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 122,858 recipes mention both. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the cinnamon liquid

  1. Pound some cinnamon.

  2. Boil the cinnamon in water at a ratio of one ounce to a pint of water until reduced to one‑third.

  3. Strain the liquid and wet the paste with the strained water.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Combine a pound of flour, half a pound of butter rubbed into it, three quarters of a pound of sugar, and a little yeast.

  2. Work the mixture lightly until incorporated.

  3. Cover the dough with a cloth and let it rise in a warm place.

  4. Shape the risen dough into small cakes.

  5. (Optional) Make the dough like pâte feuilletée, but better to form tartlets and fill them with stewed pears.

  6. (Optional) For a layered cake, cut the dough into forms of different sizes, layer paste, pear marmalade, paste, marmalade, and so on until high.

  7. Cut the final layer of paste into leaf shapes and bake in an oven until risen.

  8. (Optional) A similar cake can be made with puff pastry cut into shapes and layers of apricot marmalade or other fruit preserves.

Make the aniseed variation

  1. Pound fine aniseed and sift the powder.

  2. Mix the aniseed powder with two pounds of flour, three quarters of a pound of sugar, half a pound of butter, some grated lemon peel, and a little yeast.

  3. Wet the paste with warm water in which you melt the butter with the sugar and aniseed.

  4. When well mixed, let the dough rise for an hour in a warm place covered.

  5. Shape the risen dough into cakes of desired forms.

  6. (Optional) Use coriander seeds instead of aniseed in the same way.

By Frances Crawford. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Flour + buttertop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + lemontop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,197 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together53,530 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together98,096 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + sugartop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together89,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the dough that holds the cakes together.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.
Yeast (in the method)
Produces gas that makes the dough rise.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth to produce gas; if the dough is too cold it rises slowly or not at all, and the cakes turn out dense.

Flavor stand-ins for the lemon

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

  1. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  2. Raisinbetter flavor fit
  3. Figbetter flavor fit
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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