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Dessert

Madeira Cakes

Madeira Cakes are a sweet baked dessert made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baking powder, and citron peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter 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 ↓

Madeira Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line six Madeira cake tins with paper.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat in the eggs two at a time.

  3. Mix the flour and baking powder together, then add to the egg and butter mixture and mix well.

  4. Divide the batter evenly among the six paper-lined tins.

  5. Place a strip of citron peel on top of each cake.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F) for one hour.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the main structure once its starch sets during baking.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated batter when creamed.
Eggs
Add structure, moisture and richness, and help bind the batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.

The step that matters

Beat in the eggs two at a time. Adding eggs gradually lets the emulsion stay stable; adding them too quickly can cause the batter to curdle, which affects the final texture.

“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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