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Dessert

Swiss Cakes

A light cake made with eggs, sugar, lemon zest, fennel or coriander seed, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and fennel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 723 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Swiss Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

  1. Separate the egg whites and yolks into different bowls and beat them until frothy.

  2. Combine the beaten whites and yolks, then gradually stir in the pulverized sugar.

  3. Beat the mixture well for 15 minutes.

  4. Grate the lemon into the mixture and add the fennel or coriander seed.

Bake and serve

  1. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture onto a well-greased baking tin.

  2. Dredge the tops with pulverized sugar and bake immediately in a hot oven 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. Lemon + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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
Whites trap air when beaten and yolks add richness, giving the cakes their structure and tender crumb.
Pulverized sugar
Sweetens the batter and, when beaten with the eggs, helps stabilise the foam and adds a crisp top.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity and aroma from the zest in the batter.
Fennel or coriander seed
Contributes a warm, aromatic flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture well for 15 minutes. Long beating incorporates air into the egg foam, which provides the lift these cakes rely on since they contain no raising agent. Under-beaten batter will bake flat and dense.

Swap the fennel

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Fennelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, lemon, butter. 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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