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Dessert

Small Citron Cakes

Small citron cakes made with cream, flour, sugar, nutmeg, egg yolks, and citron peel, baked in a greased pan.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Small Citron Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Butter cake pans and place a strip of citron peel in the bottom.

Make the batter

  1. Gradually pour the cream over the flour, sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Beat the egg yolks and mix everything together.

  3. Nearly fill the pans with the mixture.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven and turn out onto a napkin when done.

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 + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

Egg yolks
Add richness and help bind the batter so it sets as it bakes.
Heavy cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the cakes a tender, soft crumb.
All-purpose flour
Provides structure, setting the batter as the starch cooks.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning on the cakes' surface.
Citron peel
Adds a bright, aromatic citrus flavour to the cakes.

The step that matters

Nearly fill the pans with the mixture. Batter needs room to rise as it bakes. Overfilling can cause spillover, while underfilling yields flatter cakes with less volume.

“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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