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Dessert

Composition Cake

A dense, buttery cake studded with currants, sultanas, and mixed peel, topped with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Composition Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Prepare one or two square baking tins (about 3 inches deep) by lining them with white stiff paper.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Sift together the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda, then gradually add to the mixture.

  4. Fold in the currants, sultanas, and mixed peel.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into the prepared tins and sprinkle chopped almonds on top.

  2. Bake in the cool oven for two hours or more, until a skewer inserted comes out clean.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Add structure and richness as they set during baking, binding the heavy fruit into the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy creamed base with the butter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Cream of tartar
Provides acidity that reacts with the baking soda to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Bake in the cool oven until a skewer comes out clean. A low oven bakes a dense, heavily fruited cake evenly without over-browning the outside. Stopping too early leaves the centre raw, so the skewer test confirms it is fully set.

Swap the currant

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

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

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