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Dessert

Bread, Cakes, Biscuits, Etc

A simple cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, orange peel, and optional sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Bread, Cakes, Biscuits, Etc

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. If the butter is stiff, warm the bowl slightly to soften it without melting.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  4. Incorporate the flavoring and then gently fold in the sifted flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into paper-lined tins, leaving space for rising.

  2. Top with orange peel, dredge with sugar, and lightly sprinkle with water.

  3. Do not shake the cakes or open the oven door until they are set on top.

  4. Bake until the tops are a rich brown and no longer moist.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sherry + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together823 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  3. Butter + sherrytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Eggs
Add structure as they set and help bind and lighten the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure of the cake once baked.

The step that matters

Do not open the oven door or shake the cakes until set. Batter structure is still fragile before the eggs and flour set. Sudden temperature drops or jarring can cause the centre to sink or the crumb to become dense.

Swap the orange

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, sherry, 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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