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Dessert

Christmas Cake

A sweet cake with raisins, currants, candied peel, ginger, nutmeg, and honey baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Christmas Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Sift dry ingredients into a bowl.

  2. Rub in the butter substitute.

Mix the batter

  1. Add raisins, currants, candied peel, ginger, nutmeg, and honey.

  2. Mix well, adding a little milk or water to achieve a cake batter consistency.

Bake

  1. Bake in a slow oven (300°F / 150°C) for 40 minutes or 20 minutes in tins.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter substitute
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender crumb.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Currants
Add small pockets of chewy fruit and sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Mix well, adding a little milk or water to achieve a cake batter consistency. The liquid must be added gradually so the batter reaches the right consistency. Too little leaves dry, crumbly cake, while too much makes it dense and heavy once baked.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, raisin, ginger, nutmeg, honey):

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, raisin, ginger, nutmeg, honey. 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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