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Dessert

Cup Cakes

A sweet baked dessert made with butter, sugar, milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and optional dried fruit or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cup Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

Make the batter

  1. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  2. Stir in the milk and any flavoring you desire.

  3. Fold in the egg whites gently.

  4. Combine the cream of tartar with the flour and add it to the mixture last.

Pan and finish

  1. Spoon the batter into buttered gem pans or drop teaspoonfuls onto flat buttered baking sheets.

  2. If desired, add currants or raisins, or for a different variety, mix in citron, almonds, and lemon extract.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, and their whites trap air that lifts the batter.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cupcakes their structure.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it brown, while creaming aerates the butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cupcakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with baking soda to produce lift.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites gently. The whites hold the air beaten into them, which gives the cupcakes lift. Vigorous stirring deflates the foam, so the cupcakes rise less and turn out denser.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cream, almond):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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