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Dessert

Cup Cakes

A sweet baked dessert made with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, salt, vanilla, and topped with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and vanilla match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,961 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Cup Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until frothy.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately until thoroughly mixed.

  3. Add the egg yolks and salt to the butter mixture.

  4. Stir in the sweet milk.

  5. Sift the pastry flour and add it alternately with the beaten egg whites, one tablespoon at a time.

  6. Mix in the baking powder with the flour.

Bake

  1. Grease gem pans and fill them halfway with the batter.

  2. Sprinkle chopped almonds on top and bake until light 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. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  5. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Creates a tender crumb and rich flavour through its fat content.
Eggs
Whites trap air for lift, while yolks add richness and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps creaming trap air into the butter.
Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and become light.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Folding the flour in alternately with the egg whites. Adding flour gradually, in small portions and alternating with the whites, keeps the beaten air in the batter. Overmixing or dumping the flour in at once deflates the whites and produces dense cakes.

“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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