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Dessert

Rich Cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, sugar, currants, sweetmeats, almonds, eggs, brandy, and orange flower water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Rich Cake

Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Rich Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter by hand until it resembles cream.

  2. Gradually add the sugar.

  3. Add the egg yolks.

  4. Mix in the remaining ingredients, adding the currants last.

  5. Incorporate the brandy and orange-flower water.

  6. Beat the mixture together for about an hour.

Prepare the pan

  1. Butter a cake pan.

  2. Line the pan with buttered paper.

  3. Fill the pan three-quarters full.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for three hours.

  2. Cool gradually by letting it stand at the oven's mouth.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

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

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's large amount of butter and eggs together.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender crumb.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air during beating.
Eggs
Add structure and lift; the separately beaten whites give extra rising and a light texture.
Currants
Add fruitiness and chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.
Almonds
Add moisture, richness and a nutty flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture for about an hour. Long beating incorporates air into the batter, which the eggs and creamed butter help hold, giving lift and a fine crumb. Under-beating leaves a dense cake, while the batter must still be stable enough to bake without collapsing.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, rose, sugar, nutmeg, almond, egg. 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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