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Dessert

Queen Cakes

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, currants, nutmeg, cinnamon, and orange-flower water.

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

Queen 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 batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the sugar, eggs, grated nutmeg, pounded cinnamon, and orange-flower water.

  3. Beat for 30 minutes.

  4. Stir in the flour and currants.

  5. Beat for an additional 5 minutes.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Butter little deep heart-shaped tins and fill them halfway with the batter.

  3. Dust a little sugar over the tops.

  4. Bake 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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, setting as the cake bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning on the surface.
Currants
Add pockets of fruitiness and chew throughout the crumb.

The step that matters

Beat for 30 minutes. Long beating of the creamed butter, sugar and eggs incorporates air that leavens the batter. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while flour should be stirred in gently afterward so the structure does not toughen.

Swap the currant

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

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

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