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Dessert

Queen Cakes

A light, currant cake baked in buttered patty pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Queen Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs with the milk.

  2. Gradually stir in the sugar.

  3. Add the flour, cinnamon, and warmed butter.

  4. Fold in the currants.

  5. Beat the batter until light.

Bake

  1. Bake in buttered patty pans.

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 + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Trap air when beaten and set the cakes' structure as they bake.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes' shape.
White sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps keep the crumb tender and browned.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the batter until light. Beating whisks air into the eggs and sugar, and that trapped air expands in the oven to give the cakes lift. Under-beaten batter bakes dense, while the flour should be folded in gently so the batter does not lose its air.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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

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