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Dessert

Composition Cake

A large cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, currants, sultanas, peel, and 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA cool oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a cool oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Prepare one or two square baking tins by lining them with stiff white 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 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy creamed base.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter and helps the leavening work evenly.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Long, low baking until a skewer comes out clean. A dense, fruit-heavy batter cooks slowly in a cool oven. Pulling it too early leaves the centre raw and wet, while overbaking dries the crumb. Testing with a skewer confirms the centre has 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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