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Dessert

Cup Cakes

A sweet baked dessert made with sugar, butter, milk, flour, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and optional dried fruit or nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cup Cakes

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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the beaten yolks of the eggs and mix well.

  4. Stir in the milk and any flavoring you desire.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

  6. Fold the dry ingredients into the wet mixture.

  7. Beat the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the batter.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into buttered gem pans or drop teaspoonfuls onto flat buttered tins.

  2. If desired, add currants, raisins, citron, or almonds before baking.

  3. Bake until golden brown.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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 whites, beaten stiff, lighten it and help it rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cakes bake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that makes the cakes rise.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so it reacts with the baking soda to help it rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Stiff whites hold air that lifts the batter. Overmixing or stirring them in vigorously deflates the foam, leaving dense cupcakes.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cream, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, flour, egg, cream, almond. 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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