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Dessert

Swiss Cakes

A cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and rose water, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Swiss Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter, sugar, and rose water until very light.

  2. Add ¼ of the flour and mix well.

  3. Whisk the eggs until very thick and gradually stir them in.

  4. Add the remaining flour one-third at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake in the preheated oven until golden.

  2. Once cool, ice the cakes and mark them into squares and diagonally with a knife before the icing dries.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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
Beaten with sugar to trap air, giving the cakes a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Whisked until thick, they add air and structure that help the cakes rise and set.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure once mixed in, setting the crumb as the cakes bake.
Sugar
Creams with the butter to create air pockets and adds sweetness and golden browning.
Rose water
Adds a floral aroma to the batter.

The step that matters

Beating the butter, sugar, and rose water until very light. Creaming softened fat with sugar traps air bubbles in the batter. These bubbles expand in the oven and give the cakes a light texture, so under-beating leaves them 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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