Skip to main content
Dessert

Found Cakes

A sweet baked cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, sultanas, currants, mixed peel, and ammonia.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Found Cakes

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.

Prepare the batter

  1. Soften the butter in a pan over hot water without melting it.

  2. Beat the softened butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the sultanas, currants, and mixed peel.

  5. Gently fold in the flour until just combined.

Bake and serve

  1. Weigh the mixture into desired sizes and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  2. For added lightness, you can include a small piece of powdered sal volatile.

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries flavour through the scone crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and, when beaten with butter, helps trap air for a lighter texture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the scones as the batter sets in the oven.
Sultanas
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the scones.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour gently until just combined. Overmixing flour develops gluten, which makes scones tough and dense. Stopping once the flour is just combined keeps the crumb tender.

“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.

More scones recipes

Scotch 46Cream 23Soda 21Potato 19Brown 11Drop 11 See all 51 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes