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Dessert

Queen Cakes

A small buttery cake with currants, lemon essence, eggs, sugar, flour, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Queen Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter in a bowl until creamy.

  2. Add the ground sugar and beat until white.

  3. Add one egg at a time, beating well after each addition.

  4. If the mixture oils, add a little flour to thicken.

  5. Add a few drops of lemon essence and mix gently.

Bake

  1. Grease eighteen queen-cake pans and scatter currants in the bottom.

  2. Pour the mixture evenly into the pans.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about 10 minutes.

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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Ground sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when beaten with butter, helps incorporate air for lightness.
Eggs
Add structure as they set and bind the batter, while also enriching it.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once heated, setting the crumb as it bakes.
Essence of lemon
Adds a bright citrus aroma that comes through in the baked cake.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Eggs added too quickly can split the butter and sugar mixture, so it looks oily. Beating well after each egg keeps it smooth. A little flour helps re-thicken and stabilise a broken batter.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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