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Dessert

Saucer-cake for Tea

A small cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and candied peel, baked in a saucer-sized tin.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Saucer-cake for Tea

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Mix flour and tous-les-mois together.

  2. Add sugar and candied peel, cut into thin slices.

Make the batter

  1. Beat butter to a cream, then add whisked eggs.

  2. Combine butter and egg mixture with dry ingredients and beat for 10 minutes.

Bake and store

  1. Pour mixture into a buttered cake tin or a soup plate lined with buttered paper.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1½ hours.

  3. Once cooled, store in a covered canister.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the dry base.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating the flour and carrying fat through the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and adds tenderness to the crumb.
Candied peel
Adds citrus aroma and flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the batter for 10 minutes. Beating incorporates air and blends the butter, eggs and dry ingredients evenly, which gives the cake its lift and even texture. Beating too little leaves streaks and a dense crumb, while the long beating also works the flour, so the batter should be mixed steadily rather than vigorously.

Swap the orange

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

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

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