Name: Tea Cakes
Ingredients: 3 eggs; 1 cup butter; 1 cup sugar; 1 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon baking soda; 2 teaspoons cream of tartar; flavoring (lemon or Sanita); flour (amount as needed)

Why it works: Butter and cream 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 ↓

Tea Cakes

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

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the dough

In a large bowl, combine the eggs, butter, sugar, salt, baking soda, and cream of tartar.
Add your chosen flavoring (lemon or Sanita).
Gradually mix in flour until you achieve a dough consistency.

Bake

Scoop the dough onto a baking sheet 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.

Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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: Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the baked cookies.
Sugar: Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown as they bake.
Baking soda: Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to help the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar: Provides acidity that activates the baking soda for lift and a tender crumb.
Flour: Forms the dough's structure, setting as it bakes into the cakes.