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Dessert

Queen Cakes

A buttery cake with sugar, flour, currants, eggs, nutmeg, cinnamon, and bitter almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Queen Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

  2. Add the sugar to the butter and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the eggs, mixing after each addition.

  4. Stir in the flour and other ingredients.

  5. Beat the mixture well for 30 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour into small buttered tins, filling them nearly full.

  2. Sprinkle finely-pounded loaf sugar on top.

  3. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + almondtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cakes a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help the batter rise and set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes as its starch sets during baking.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps the top brown as it caramelises in the oven.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and small pockets of chewy texture throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture for 30 minutes. Long beating incorporates air that leavens the batter, but overbeating after the flour is added can develop gluten and toughen the crumb, so keep the mixing steady and purposeful.

Swap the currant

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

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

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