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Dessert

Queen Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, cream, currants, and lemon or almond essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Queen Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Sift the baking powder with the flour onto a sheet of paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a clean bowl, cream together the butter, sugar, and cream until light.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the flour and currants, adding milk to achieve a cake batter consistency.

  4. Pour the mixture into small buttered tins.

Bake

  1. Bake the cakes at 400°F (200°C) for 30 to 40 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they set.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb, and helps trap air when creamed.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter, add structure, and contribute to rise and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, lifting the cakes as they bake.
Cream
Adds moisture and softness to the batter.

The step that matters

Add the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually, mixing well after each, lets the fat and liquid combine into a smooth emulsion. Adding them all at once can cause the batter to curdle, which may result in a coarser, denser cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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