Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
Cup Cake
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the batter
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the sour cream and eggs, mixing well.
In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.
Flavor with lemon or vanilla extract.
Bake and assemble
Pour the batter into pans that are one inch deep.
Bake until done, then spread icing on one layer and place the other layer on top.
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.
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Eggs
- Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, and aids creaming with the sugar.
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and acidity, producing a tender crumb.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour cream and cream of tartar to make the cake rise.
The step that matters
Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture. Adding flour in portions and mixing only until combined keeps the batter smooth and limits gluten development, which would otherwise make the cake tough.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, flour, cream, egg):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Coconutfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, cream, egg. 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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