Skip to main content
Baking

Cup Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, milk, and optional whisky, baked in cups.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a mixing bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the beaten egg yolks.

  4. Dissolve the baking powder in the sweet cream or milk and add to the mixture.

  5. Gradually add the flour and mix until smooth.

  6. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the batter into baking tins.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Layer with coconut or almond filling.

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

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

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

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

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

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

  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 the sugar to trap air and give the cupcake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated structure when creamed with butter.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat and moisture, and help bind the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to make the cupcake rise and turn light.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes.
Egg whites
Folded in beaten, they add lift and an airy crumb.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites gently. Egg whites hold air bubbles that give the cupcake its lift. Vigorous stirring deflates them, leading to a dense, flat result.

“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 cupcake recipes

Ginger 6Plain 6White 6Cornmeal 5 See all 111 →

You might also like

Delicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipesScotch CakeScotch Cake63 recipes