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Dessert

Tunbridge Cakes

A small, round cake made with butter, flour, caraway seeds, powdered sugar, and water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tunbridge 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 dough

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

  2. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

  3. Add caraway seeds and powdered sugar, mixing to form a stiff paste with a little water.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough very thin.

  2. Cut into round cakes using a glass or the top of a dredging box.

  3. Prick each cake with a fork.

  4. Bake on floured baking sheets until lightly 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. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Caraway + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,409 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

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
Coats the flour and adds richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together once water is added.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and dissolves easily into the dough for a fine texture.
Caraway seeds
Contributes a distinctive aromatic, slightly peppery flavor.

The step that matters

Mixing the stiff paste with only a little water. Adding too much water lets gluten develop in the flour, which makes the cakes tough instead of short and crisp. Add water gradually and stop once the dough just holds together.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Jalapenofits better
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

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