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Dessert

English Tea-cakes

A light batter of eggs, butter, sugar, and flour baked into small cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

English Tea-cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar until light.

  2. Beat in the egg yolks.

  3. Stir in the flour alternately with the stiffly beaten egg whites.

  4. Pour the batter into greased jelly-cake tins.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until golden and serve fresh.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Egg whites give lift and airy structure, while yolks add richness and help set the crumb.
Butter
Fat coats flour particles and makes the crumb tender and rich.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, traps air that aids rising.
Flour
Provides the protein and starch that form the cake's main structure as it bakes.

The step that matters

Folding in the flour and beaten egg whites. Stirring too vigorously deflates the whites' trapped air, so the cakes rise less and turn dense. Add the flour and whites alternately and mix gently, just until combined.

“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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