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Dessert

Prince of Wales Cakes

A small cake made with flour, cornflour, milk, baking powder, butter, egg, sugar, and flavouring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Prince of Wales Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Mix the flour, cornflour, and baking powder together.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. Add the egg, flavouring, and milk, then mix in the flour mixture.

  3. Continue to beat for five minutes.

  4. Butter some small bun tins and half fill them with the mixture.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake in the oven for about twenty minutes.

  2. Let cool on a wire rack.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main structure once the batter sets in the oven.
Cornflour
Gives a lighter, more tender crumb than flour alone.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Egg
Helps bind the batter and adds structure and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cakes rise and become light.

The step that matters

Continue to beat for five minutes. Beating the creamed butter and sugar and then the batter incorporates air that helps the cakes rise. Overbeating after the flour is added can develop gluten and toughen the crumb, so keep the mixing deliberate.

“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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