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Dessert

Tea Cakes

A sweet baked dough made with butter, sugar, eggs, baking powder, cardamom, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cardamom and flour work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 643 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the baking powder and ground cardamom.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is thin enough to roll.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in a preheated 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. Cardamom + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together643 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Creams with sugar to create a tender, rich texture and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and, creamed with butter, helps give them a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven to lift the cakes and lighten the texture.
Ground cardamom
Adds a warm, aromatic flavor to the cakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled thin and hold its cut shapes.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is thin enough to roll. Adding too much flour at once or too much overall makes the dough stiff and dry, producing tough cakes. Adding it gradually lets you stop once the dough is rollable while keeping it tender.

Swap the cardamom

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Cardamomthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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