Skip to main content
Dessert

Cup Cake

A sweet cake baked in individual cups using butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, brandy or wine, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cup Cake

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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little of the milk.

  4. Stir the raisins and coat them in a little flour.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg yolks, milk with baking soda, wine, flour, spices, and raisins to the mixture.

  3. Pour the batter into cups and bake until golden.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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
Whites and yolks add structure and richness to the batter once beaten.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds fat and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps browning.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cupcakes bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that helps the cupcakes rise.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly through the batter. Undissolved pockets can cause uneven rise and bitter spots in the finished cupcakes.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Apricotfits less well

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

More cupcake recipes

Ginger 6Plain 6White 6Cornmeal 5 See all 111 →

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipesBrandy PuddingBrandy Pudding13 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes