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Brunswick Jelly Cakes

Round butter cakes spread with fruit jelly or marmalade and topped with a baked meringue of egg whites and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Brunswick Jelly 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 dough

  1. Cream together the powdered sugar and butter until light.

  2. Beat the eggs until thick and smooth.

  3. Sift the flour and mix it into the egg mixture with the butter and sugar.

  4. Add the mixed spice and rose-water or wine, and stir well.

  5. Sprinkle flour on a surface and lay the dough; add more flour if too moist.

  6. Roll the dough to ½ inch thick and cut out round cakes.

Bake and top

  1. Place the cakes in buttered pans and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 5-6 minutes.

  2. Once cooled, spread fruit jelly or marmalade on each cake.

  3. Beat the egg whites until stiff, gradually adding powdered sugar until thick.

  4. Flavor with lemon essence and heap it on each cake.

  5. Bake in a coal oven until the tops are a pale brown.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Beaten eggs add structure and lightness to the dough.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together.
Egg whites
Whipped until stiff, they form a light meringue topping that sets when baked.
Powdered sugar
Creamed with butter and whipped into the whites, it adds sweetness and helps the topping thicken.

The step that matters

Bake the meringue topping until pale brown. Meringue is mostly whipped egg white and sugar; it sets and browns in the oven, and over-baking can scorch it or make it weep, while under-baking leaves it soft.

Swap the mace

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

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

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