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Dessert

Cup Cake

A sweet baked cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, sour milk, flour, baking soda, spices, and currants.

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 ↓

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

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

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

  3. Add the beaten eggs and sour milk, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the baking soda and flour until combined.

  5. Flavor the batter with spices to your taste.

  6. Fold in the currants.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for 30 minutes.

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. Milk + flourtop 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. Egg + flourtop 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the cake a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creams with the butter and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity that reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets when baked.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda and flour until combined.. Baking soda needs acid from the sour milk to react and lift the batter. Mixing only until combined keeps the crumb tender, since overworked flour develops gluten and makes the cake tough.

Swap the currant

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

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

More cup cake recipes

White 14Coconut 8Ginger 5Fruit 4New York 4Molasses 3 See all 67 →

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