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Dessert

Balmoral Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, caraway seeds, baking soda, tartaric acid, and dusted with caster sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Balmoral 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.

Prepare

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

Make the dough

  1. Mix the baking soda and tartaric acid with the flour.

  2. Rub in the butter and sugar until well combined.

  3. Make a well in the flour mixture, add the caraway seeds.

  4. Beat the eggs with the milk, then combine with the flour mixture to form a dough.

Bake

  1. Place the dough into buttered pans according to size.

  2. Dust the tops with caster sugar.

  3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden brown.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough as the main body of the cake.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating the flour and softening the crumb.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the tartaric acid to produce gas that lifts the dough.
Tartaric acid
Acid that reacts with the baking soda to make the cake rise.

The step that matters

Combining the baking soda and tartaric acid with the flour. Baking soda and tartaric acid release carbon dioxide only when moistened and mixed into the dough, so the rise depends on prompt, even mixing and baking once the dough is formed.

Swap the caraway

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

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

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