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Dessert

Queen Cakes

A small heart-shaped cake made with butter, sugar, egg yolks, lemon zest, currants, candied orange peel, flour, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Queen Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the egg yolks one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Mix the lemon zest, currants, and candied orange peel with the flour.

  4. Add the flour mixture alternately with the beaten egg whites to the batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter small heart-shaped cake tins and fill them half full with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  3. Sprinkle lightly with grated nutmeg and sugar before serving.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the cakes a tender, rich crumb.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and help bind the batter.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in to lighten the batter and help the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cakes as they bake.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and chew to the finished cakes.

The step that matters

Add the flour mixture alternately with the beaten egg whites. Folding gently in portions keeps the whites' trapped air intact. Overmixing deflates the batter, so the cakes rise less and turn dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, lemon, orange, flour, nutmeg. 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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