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Dessert

Love Cake

A simple cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, salt, mace or rose water, topped with extra sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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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 ↓

Love 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make and bake the batter

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the flour, salt, and mace or rose water, mixing until smooth.

  3. Drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet.

  4. Sprinkle additional sugar on top before baking.

  5. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until golden.

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. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Flour + macetop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,974 recipes
  5. Sugar + macetop 34% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,096 recipes

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Whisked with sugar, they trap air and give the cake its light, airy structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten that set the batter into a tender, firm crumb when baked.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the eggs hold air, while its surface crisps and browns in the oven.
Mace or rose water
Adds the characteristic aroma that flavours the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs and sugar until well combined. Eggs and sugar must be beaten enough to dissolve the sugar and trap air bubbles. This airy foam is what lifts the batter, so under-beaten eggs give a dense, flat cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Jalapenofits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour. 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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