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Dessert

French Cakes

A sweet batter of flour, sugar, butter, milk, wine, eggs, spices, and baking soda baked into golden cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

French Cakes

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, rub together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the milk and part of the flour to the mixture.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in the wine and add it to the mixture.

  4. Incorporate the remaining flour and the eggs, beaten separately, adding the egg whites last.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into square tins 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. Butter + milktop 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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Forms the structure of the cake as it sets in the oven.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whites help the batter rise and hold air.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and, creamed with sugar, traps air for a light crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed with butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic wine to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Wine
Its acidity activates the baking soda, and it adds moisture and flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the egg whites last. Folding the whites in gently at the end keeps the air they hold intact, so the cake stays light rather than deflating.

“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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