Name: English Tea-cakes
Ingredients: 2 eggs; 2 tablespoons butter, creamed; 2 tablespoons sugar, creamed; 2 cups flour

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

2 eggs
2 tablespoons butter, creamed
2 tablespoons sugar, creamed
2 cups flour

Directions

Make the batter

Cream the butter and sugar until light.
Beat in the egg yolks.
Stir and beat for 1 minute.
Add the flour alternately with the stiffly beaten egg whites.

Bake and serve

Pour the batter into greased jelly-cake tins.
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.

Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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: Yolks enrich the batter, and beaten whites add lift and a lighter crumb.
Butter: Creamed with sugar, it adds fat and a tender texture.
Sugar: Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps trap air for a light texture.
Flour: Provides the structure that sets the cakes as they bake.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Adding the flour alternately with the whites should be done gently. Overmixing knocks air out of the whites, which leads to a dense cake instead of a light one.

“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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English Tea-cakes