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Dessert

Christmas Cake

A yeasted fruit cake made with flour, butter, lard, currants, sugar, nutmeg, candied lemon peel, brandy, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Christmas Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Mix flour and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Rub in butter and lard until well combined.

  3. Add yeast and knead the dough as for common bread.

  4. If using baking powder, mix it in with the flour.

  5. Let the dough rise if using yeast.

Mix and bake

  1. Mix in currants, sugar, nutmeg, candied lemon peel, brandy, and beaten eggs.

  2. Butter a mold and pour in the mixture.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about 2 hours.

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

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

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the main bulk of the dough.
Butter and lard
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Yeast
Produces gas that lifts the dough so it rises before baking.
Currants
Add fruit bulk, moisture and sweetness throughout the cake.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crumb brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise if using yeast. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce gas; if the dough is not allowed to rise fully, the cake will be dense. Baking powder works without this rise, so the two leavening methods should not be mixed up.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, nutmeg, lemon, brandy, 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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