Why it works: Sugar and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓
Call a Lily Cakes
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Make the cakes
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Mix the sugar, baking powder, flour, and water until well combined.
Pour the batter thinly into saucers.
Bake until lightly golden, then remove from the oven.
Shape and finish
Roll each cake up like a funnel and tie in that shape.
Once cooled, remove the strings.
Fill with whipped cream or jelly, or ice the inside and outside with white icing.
Cut a long, square strip of orange and place it inside.
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.
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Flour
- Forms the structure of the batter so the thin cakes hold their shape once baked.
- Granulated sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown lightly in the oven.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, giving the thin cakes lift and a lighter texture.
The step that matters
Rolling the cakes while still warm. Baked cakes must be pliable to roll without cracking. Rolling them into a funnel shape only works while they are warm and flexible; once they cool and stiffen, they tend to crack or hold their shape poorly.
“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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