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Dessert

Fairy Butter

A sweet cake topping made with sponge cake, wine, jam, egg yolks, butter, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Wine and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Fairy Butter

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Pour a little wine on the slice of sponge cake and let it stand overnight.

  2. If desired, spread jam on the cake.

Make and serve the topping

  1. Beat the hard-boiled egg yolks with the fresh butter and fine white sugar until well combined.

  2. Pass the mixture through a coarse wire sieve onto the cake.

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. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Wine + sugartop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together9,581 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

What each ingredient does

Hard-boiled egg yolks
Add richness and body, helping the butter and sugar form a smooth, creamy topping.
Fresh butter
Adds fat for a rich, smooth texture and a soft, melting mouthfeel.
Fine white sugar
Sweetens the topping and helps give it a smooth, creamy consistency when beaten with the butter.
Sponge cake
Forms the soft base that the wine soaks into and the topping rests on.

The step that matters

Passing the mixture through the sieve. Pressing the creamed mixture through a coarse sieve breaks up any lumps so the topping falls onto the cake in fine, smooth strands. Skipping this leaves the texture uneven.

“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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