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Dessert

Queen-cake

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, currants, butter, eggs, and lemon rind, baked in small tins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and rose work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 494 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Queen-cake

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 the batter

  1. Mix the dried flour, sifted sugar, and washed currants in a bowl.

  2. Wash the butter in rose-water and beat it well.

  3. Add the beaten eggs to the butter and mix thoroughly.

  4. Gradually incorporate the dry ingredients and beat the mixture for one hour.

Fill and bake

  1. Butter small tins, teacups, or saucers and fill them half full with the batter.

  2. Sprinkle a little fine sugar over the batter before placing them in the oven.

  3. Butter small pattypans, fill them half full, and bake for 20 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Rose + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,174 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Beaten eggs bind the batter and help it rise and set structure as they cook.
Butter
Creams with the eggs to add richness, tenderness, and a fine crumb.
Dried flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sifted sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning on the crust.

The step that matters

Beating the batter for one hour. Long beating incorporates air into the butter, sugar, and eggs, which lifts the cake. Keeping the mixture well blended ensures an even, light texture.

Swap the currant

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

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

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