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Dessert

Luncheon Cake

A sweet cake made with dough, currants, caraway seeds, sugar, eggs, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,856 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Luncheon 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, combine the dough, currants, caraway seeds, sugar, and eggs. Mix until well combined.

  2. Gradually add the clarified butter and mix until smooth.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until golden brown.

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 + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Currant + carawaytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together232 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Dough
Forms the base structure of the cake.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure as they set in the oven.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning in the oven.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and bursts of moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Gradually add the clarified butter and mix until smooth. Adding fat slowly and mixing until smooth helps it emulsify evenly into the batter, so the cake bakes with a uniform texture instead of greasy pockets.

Swap the caraway

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Carawaythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, sugar, egg, butter. 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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