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Dessert

Suabian Wine Cakes

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, coriander, mace, flour, and currants, iced with boiled sugar and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Suabian Wine Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Sift in the sugar and whisk until foamy.

  3. Rub the hard-boiled egg yolks through a sieve and add to the whole egg and egg yolk; beat until creamy.

  4. Stir the egg mixture into the butter and sugar mixture with the coriander extract and mace; beat until smooth.

  5. Sift in the flour and knead until the dough is full of air bubbles.

Shape and finish

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut into narrow strips.

  2. Shape the strips into S or U forms.

  3. Cover with a thin icing made from boiled sugar and water, then sprinkle with chopped currants.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until a delicate yellow.

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. Mace + curranttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  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. Coriander + flourtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,973 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
Creams with the sugar to form a rich, tender crumb structure.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat and colour, and help bind the dough.
Whole egg
Adds structure and moisture that help hold the dough together.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once kneaded.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough become light when whisked.

The step that matters

Kneading after adding the flour. Kneading develops gluten and works air into the dough. Over-kneading can make the cakes tough, while too little leaves them dense and less airy.

Swap the coriander

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Corianderthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, mace, flour, currant. 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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