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Dessert

Queen, or Heart Cakes

A buttery cake with currants and nutmeg, baked in small tin pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Queen, or Heart Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter with the sugar and grated nutmeg until well combined.

  2. Add half of the eggs and beat for 10 minutes.

  3. Incorporate the remaining eggs and beat for another 10 minutes.

  4. Gently stir in the flour, then fold in the currants.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease small tin pans with butter and fill them with the batter.

  2. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) for a few minutes.

  3. Remove the cakes from the pans as soon as they are done.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cakes a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and lift through their proteins, and help bind the batter.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake once its proteins set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air when creamed with the butter.
Currants
Add pockets of sweet, fruity flavour and chewy texture throughout the crumb.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs in portions. Eggs must be fully incorporated into the creamed butter and sugar; adding them in halves and beating well keeps the emulsion stable so the batter does not curdle and lose its air.

Swap the currant

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

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

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