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Dessert

Saffron Cakes

A sweet yeast cake flavored with saffron, spices, and rose water, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Saffron 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Boil the milk and butter together.

  2. Skim off the butter and mix it with the flour and a little of the milk.

  3. Stir the yeast into the remaining milk and strain it.

  4. Combine the strained milk with the flour mixture.

  5. Add the beaten eggs, spices, rose water, saffron, and sugar.

  6. Beat all ingredients well and pour into a well-buttered pan.

Bake

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1 ½ hours.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Caraway + cinnamontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Caraway + clovetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together143 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat for tender crumb and rich flavour.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and gives the cake an airy texture.
Fine flour
Forms the gluten and starch network that gives the cake its main structure.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.

The step that matters

Combining the yeast with the milk. Yeast must be stirred into milk that is warm rather than hot; excessive heat can kill the yeast, so the cake may fail to rise.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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