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Cakes

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

  1. In a saucepan, combine caster sugar, lemon zest, salt, and milk. Heat over moderate heat, stirring well until it bubbles.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the whipped egg whites until nearly cold.

  3. Prepare the cake crust and let it cool. Dip each choux into sugar icing and place them side by side around the top of the choux paste.

  4. Top each choux with a preserved cherry dipped in icing.

  5. In a lined saucepan, melt butter with cold water over heat. Once hot, add flour mixed with sugar and stir rapidly until combined.

  6. Remove from heat and stir for 1-2 minutes. Let the paste stand for a couple of minutes, then mix in eggs one at a time, stirring well after each addition.

  7. Let the paste rest for 30 minutes.

  8. On a clean surface, combine flour, sugar, butter, salt, and cinnamon. Add the beaten egg and work until smooth.

  9. Roll out the paste to ½ inch thickness, trim to a round shape, and place in a buttered baking dish.

  10. Spread a thin layer of the first prepared paste over the base.

  11. Fill a pastry bag with the remaining paste and pipe it around the edge of the cake.

  12. Prick the center of the paste in several places.

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. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, egg, butter, flour, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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