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Dessert

Perth Cake

A currant cake made with flour, sugar, butter, milk, baking soda, lemon essence, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Perth Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, brown sugar, currants, nutmeg, and cinnamon or ginger.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the melted butter and milk.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the cold milk and add it to the butter and milk mixture.

  5. Add the lemon essence and mix well.

Mix and bake

  1. Combine the wet and dry ingredients and beat until smooth.

  2. Pour the batter into a buttered tin and bake until golden.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness and helps keep the crumb moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the liquid to produce gas that lifts and aerates the batter.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolving the baking soda in the cold milk. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it reacts evenly with the batter's acidity. Undissolved pockets can cause uneven rising and bitter spots in the cake.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter, milk, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, nutmeg, cinnamon, butter, milk, 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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