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Dessert

Cup-cake

A sweet baked dessert made with butter, sugar, flour, sour cream, eggs, brandy, rose water, baking soda, and sweet milk.

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

Cup-cake

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.

Prepare

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the eggs well.

Make the batter

  1. Add the butter, sugar, flour, sour cream, brandy, and rose water to the eggs and mix until combined.

  2. Dissolve the baking soda in the sweet milk and add it to the mixture, ensuring no lumps remain.

  3. Beat the mixture well for a few minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into well-buttered little tins or cups, filling them only halfway.

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

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and provide structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cupcakes brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cupcakes brown as they bake.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cupcakes as the batter sets.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity reacts with the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that helps the cupcakes rise.

The step that matters

Bake immediately after mixing. Baking soda starts reacting as soon as it meets the acidic sour cream and liquid. Gas bubbles form quickly and can escape if the batter waits, so the cupcakes may rise less well.

“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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