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Dessert

Honey Cup Cakes

Honey Cupcakes are sweet baked goods made with honey, margarine, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, lemon, salt, and nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Honey 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the margarine and gradually add the sugar.

  2. Stir in the lemon juice and rind, then add the eggs beaten light.

  3. Mix together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

  4. Add the flour mixture alternately with the honey to the cake mixture.

Bake

  1. Bake as a loaf or in cup cake tins.

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Honey + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,707 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

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

Margarine
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cupcakes a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cupcakes together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cupcakes rise and become light.
Honey
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a golden browning as the cupcakes bake.

The step that matters

Add the flour mixture alternately with the honey. Adding the dry and liquid parts in alternating portions keeps the batter smooth and well emulsified. Overmixing after the flour goes in can develop gluten and make the cupcakes tough.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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