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Dessert

Saucer Cake

Saucer Cake is a sweet cake made with flour, arrowroot, butter, powdered sugar, candied peel, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and arrowroot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 525 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Saucer Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Mix the flour and arrowroot together.

  2. Beat the butter until creamy, then add the powdered sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in the flour, arrowroot, candied peel, and whisked eggs.

  2. Beat the mixture until smooth and light.

  3. Pour into a shallow dish lined with buttered paper.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about an hour or more.

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. Flour + arrowroottop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together525 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 cake together as it sets.
Arrowroot
Adds a light, tender texture because it contributes starch without much gluten.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that makes the crumb tender and moist.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set, adding structure and lift when beaten.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves easily into the creamed butter.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture until smooth and light. Beating creams the butter and sugar and traps air in the batter, which gives the cake its lift and a fine, even crumb once baked.

Swap the arrowroot

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

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Arrowrootthe original

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