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Dessert

Cup Cake

A small cake made with butter, sugar, sour cream, flour, eggs, baking soda, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Mix in the sour cream.

  3. Gradually add the flour and baking soda.

  4. Beat the eggs until light.

  5. Fold the beaten eggs into the mixture.

  6. Add the grated nutmeg and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into small tins.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) 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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Creams with the butter for aeration and adds sweetness and golden browning.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, keeping the crumb tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets as the cupcakes bake.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and lift when beaten and folded into the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to produce gas that makes the cupcakes rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten eggs. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the eggs, which helps the cupcakes rise. Vigorous stirring knocks out that air and can make the crumb dense.

“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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