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Dessert

Small Sugar Cakes of Various Kinds

A small sugar cake made with butter, flour, sugar, lemon rind, eggs, and optional spices and dried fruit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Small Sugar Cakes of Various Kinds

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 dough

  1. In a bowl, mix ½ pound of butter with 1 pound of flour until crumbly.

  2. Add ¾ pound of dry sifted sugar and the grated rind of 2 lemons or your choice of flavoring.

  3. Incorporate a pinch of salt.

  4. Gradually add 2 to 4 lightly whisked eggs until a firm paste forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes with a cake tin, or drop spoonfuls onto baking sheets.

  2. Space the cakes 2 inches apart on the baking sheets to allow for spreading.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) 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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + carawaytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together188 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the dough a tender, crumbly texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the dough into a firm paste and add structure and richness.

The step that matters

Spacing the cakes on the baking sheets. Sugar cakes spread as they bake, so leaving room between them, as the record specifies, keeps them from fusing and helps them bake evenly.

Swap the cinnamon

The recipe marks cinnamon as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, lemon, egg, caraway, ginger):

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, lemon, egg, caraway, ginger. 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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