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Dessert

Strawberry Cakes

A light cake flavored with strawberry essence and blanc-mange powder, baked in small greased tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Strawberry Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter, then add the sugar and Coomb’s flour, moistening gradually with the yolks and stiffly beaten whites of the eggs.

  2. Add the strawberry essence, and lastly, gently stir in the blanc-mange powder.

Bake

  1. Bake in small greased tins for about 10 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Strawberry + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,060 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Strawberry + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,190 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Yolks enrich and whites, beaten stiff, lighten the batter and give it structure as it bakes.
Coomb’s flour
Provides the starch and protein that set the cake's structure as it bakes.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with the butter.
Bird’s strawberry blanc-mange powder
Adds strawberry flavour and sweetness to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Whites hold air that makes the cake rise. Adding them gradually with the yolks keeps the batter from deflating, and stirring the blanc-mange powder in gently at the end preserves that trapped air.

Swap the strawberry

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

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

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