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Dessert

Filling for Imperial Cake

A fruit and spice filling for imperial cake.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,659 recipes. Both carry alpha-pinene, which smells pine, turpentine. The science ↓

Filling for Imperial Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Thoroughly clean and pick the currants and sultanas.

  2. Chop the mixed peel very fine.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, mix the currants, sultanas, glace cherries, mixed peel, and essence of mixed spice.

  2. Break in the eggs and rub the mixture well together.

  3. Lay the filling over the cake as directed.

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. Currant + almondtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,659 recipes

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

  2. Egg + almondtop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness in the filling.
Sultanas
Add moisture and sweetness through the filling.
Eggs
Bind the fruit mixture together and add structure.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, egg):

  1. Peasfits better
  2. Pecansfits about as well
  3. Almondthe original
  4. Walnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, 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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