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Dessert

Queen Cakes

A small currant cake baked in a 400°F oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Queen 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.

Prepare

  1. Grease eight or nine small patty pans.

  2. Sprinkle a few cleaned currants at the bottom of each pan.

Make the cake mixture

  1. Beat the butter until creamy.

  2. Add the sugar and beat until light.

  3. Add one egg and beat a little, then add the second egg.

  4. Gently stir in the flour, baking powder, and lemon flavoring.

Bake

  1. Fill the pans with the cake mixture.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 10 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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, it traps air that helps the cakes rise and gives a tender crumb.
Sugar
Beaten with butter to lighten the batter and add sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, richness, and lift as the cakes set.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once the batter bakes and sets.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the small cakes rise and become light.

The step that matters

Gently stir in the flour, baking powder, and lemon flavoring.. Overmixing once flour is added develops gluten, which can make the cakes tough and dense. Stirring only until combined keeps the crumb tender.

Swap the currant

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

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

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