Skip to main content
Dessert

Mint Cases

A sweet yeast dough flavored with fresh mint, shaped into cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Mint Cases

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mint decoction

  1. Chop fresh mint leaves coarsely and place them in a covered saucepan.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes, then strain through a cloth without squeezing too hard.

Make the dough

  1. Use the mint decoction to moisten the flour, sugar, butter, yeast, and egg yolks.

  2. Let the mixture rise in a warm place for 1 hour.

Shape

  1. Shape the dough into cakes.

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. Flour + buttertop 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 + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cakes tender.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise.
Fresh mint leaves
Give the cakes their fresh mint aroma and flavor.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment and produce gas. Too cold and the dough stays dense; too hot and the yeast can die or the dough can over-ferment. Allow the full rise in a warm spot before shaping.

Swap the mint

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

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

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

You might also like

Mint JellyMint Jelly22 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipes