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Dessert

Queen Cakes

A light cake with currants, butter, sugar, flour, milk, eggs, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Queen 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 and mix

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Add the egg yolks and beat well.

  4. Mix in the lemon juice, then gradually add the flour and milk.

  5. Whip the egg whites until stiff and gently fold them into the mixture.

  6. Stir in the currants.

Bake

  1. Half-fill well-buttered small cake tins and bake for 20 minutes.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cakes a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich the batter and whites, whipped stiff, lighten it and help the cakes rise.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cakes bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps trap air when creamed with butter.
Milk
Adds moisture so the batter loosens to a smooth consistency.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Whites whipped until stiff hold the air that lightens the batter. Stirring them in vigorously knocks that air out, leaving dense cakes, so fold gently and keep the batter airy.

Swap the currant

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

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

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