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Dessert

Easter Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, eggs, sugar, baking powder, and optional flavoring, baked in a 400°F oven.

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

Easter 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.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Beat in one egg, then half of the sugar, followed by the second egg and the remaining sugar.

  3. Mix in the flour and baking powder; if the mixture is too stiff, add a little milk to achieve a thick cream consistency.

Bake and finish

  1. Grease your patty pans and half fill them with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

  3. Ice the cakes when cool.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together as they set.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the batter cream to a light, smooth texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the heat, helping the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Adding the milk to the batter. Milk should only be added if the mixture is too stiff. Too much liquid thins the batter, so it may spread, rise unevenly, or bake up dense and flat.

“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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