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Dessert

Tea-Cakes

A sweet, lightly baked cake made with flour, butter, eggs, sugar, and water, topped with caster sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Tea-Cakes

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 the dough

  1. Sift flour onto a clean surface and make a well in the center.

  2. Add salt, sugar, and warmed butter into the well and mix well.

  3. Stir in the beaten eggs and enough cold water to form a stiff paste.

  4. Knead the paste well, then roll it out to about 1/2 inch thick.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut the paste into rounds using a 4-inch cutter.

  2. Butter a baking sheet and place the rounds on it.

  3. Brush the tops with water and sprinkle with caster sugar.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  5. Serve when cooled.

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 structure of the dough once mixed with liquid and kneaded.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderising the dough and helping it brown in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the paste and add richness and structure to the baked cakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the tops brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Adding enough cold water to form a stiff paste. Too little water leaves the dough crumbly and hard to roll, while too much makes it sticky and tough once kneaded. Add it gradually until the paste just holds together.

“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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