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Dessert

Nut Cup Cakes

Nut Cup Cakes are cupcakes made with butter, sugar, flour, milk, baking powder, egg whites, nuts, and flavoring.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Nut Cup Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the flour, milk, and baking powder, mixing well.

  3. Fold the egg whites in gently.

  4. Stir in the chopped nut meats and flavoring.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into cupcake liners and bake.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cupcakes together as they set.
Egg whites
Add structure and help the batter set firm when baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the cupcakes rise and become lighter.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cupcakes and helps them brown during baking.
Chopped nut meats
Add texture and nutty flavor throughout the cupcakes.

The step that matters

Fold the egg whites in gently. Vigorous stirring knocks air out of the batter, so the cupcakes rise less and bake up denser and less light.

“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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