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Dessert

To Make Queen Cakes

Queen Cakes are sweet cakes made with sugar, flour, butter, eggs, currants, nutmeg, mace, and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Make Queen Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  3. Add the sifted sugar to the creamed butter and mix well.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites for about 30 minutes until stiff.

  2. Gently fold the beaten egg whites into the butter and sugar mixture.

  3. In another bowl, beat the egg yolks for about 30 minutes.

  4. Combine the beaten yolks with the butter mixture and mix thoroughly.

  5. Gradually add the flour, spices, and currants, mixing until just combined.

Bake

  1. Spoon the batter into greased tins and dust a little sugar on top.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for about 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cakes a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Whipped whites lighten the batter and yolks add richness and structure as the cakes set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps the creamed butter hold air, aiding browning.
Currants
Add small pockets of sweet, fruity flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whipped whites hold the air that lightens the cake. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring hard deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, egg, nutmeg, mace, cinnamon. 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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