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 ↓
Cup Cake
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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the batter
In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy.
Add the eggs and sour milk, mixing well.
Stir in the baking soda and flour gradually.
Flavor the batter with spices to your taste.
Fold in the currants.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30 minutes.
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together78,219 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked 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
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness, and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with sugar.
- Sugar
- Sweetens the batter and, when creamed with butter, traps air that lightens the texture.
- Eggs
- Provide structure as they set and add moisture and richness to the crumb.
- Sour milk
- Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acid in sour milk to produce gas that leavens the batter.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
The step that matters
Stir in the baking soda and flour gradually. Baking soda must react with the sour milk's acid while the batter is still able to trap the gas. Adding flour gradually and mixing gently keeps the batter evenly combined and avoids overworking the gluten, which would make the cake tough.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour):
- Vanillafits better
- Raisinfits better
- Figfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour. 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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