Skip to main content
Dessert

Bordentown Cup Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, tartaric acid, and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Bordentown Cup Cake

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat together the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. Add a portion of the flour and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add them to the mixture.

  4. Add more flour, then the milk, and finally the remaining flour.

  5. Dissolve the tartaric acid and baking soda in a little water and stir into the batter.

  6. Mix well and bake immediately.

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

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cupcake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the butter hold air when creamed.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter bind and set.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.
Tartaric acid and baking soda
React together to produce gas that makes the cupcakes rise.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after adding the acid and baking soda. Tartaric acid and baking soda release gas as soon as they are wet and mixed. Delaying the bake lets much of that gas escape, so the cupcakes may rise less and turn out denser.

“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

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes