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Dessert

Luncheon Cup Cakes

A small cake made with egg, sweet cream, sugar, flour, baking powder, mace, and colored sugar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Luncheon Cup Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Break the egg into a small cup and fill it with sweet cream.

  2. Beat the mixture together.

  3. Add sugar, flour, baking powder, and mace, and mix until combined.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle with colored granulated sugar.

  2. Pour the batter into gem pans.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cream + macetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,009 recipes
  5. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Sweet cream
Adds moisture and richness, tenderising the crumb.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cupcakes as the batter sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the cupcakes rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps brown the surface.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking too briefly leaves the centre wet and the structure weak, while over-baking dries the crumb. Golden colour signals that the sugars have browned and the cake has set.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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