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Dessert

Little Cakes

Small cakes made with butter, sugar, spices, lemon peel, eggs, currants, flour, and sweet wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Little Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon peel, eggs, currants, flour, and sweet wine; mix well.

  3. Roll out the dough and cut into small cakes.

Finish and bake

  1. Brush the tops with sweet wine using a feather.

  2. Sift grated sugar over the cakes.

  3. Bake on tins at 350°F (175°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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 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

Fresh butter
Creamed butter gives the dough its rich, tender body and fat-based flavour.
Pounded loaf sugar
Sugar adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown as they bake.
Eggs
Eggs bind the dough and add structure and richness to the cakes.
Flour
Flour provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Currants
Currants add pockets of sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cakes.
Sweet wine
Wine adds moisture and aroma, and brushing the tops adds gloss and flavour.

The step that matters

Beat the butter until creamy. Beating butter traps air in its fat, which helps the dough stay light and even. Under-beaten butter leaves dense, uneven cakes.

Swap the currant

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

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

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