Name: Rout Cakes
Ingredients: 2 pounds flour; 1 pound butter; 1 pound sugar; 1 pound currants, cleaned and dried; 2 eggs; 1 tablespoon orange flower water; 1 tablespoon rose water

Why it works: Orange and rose work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 876 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Rout Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and bake

In a large bowl, mix the flour, butter, sugar, and currants.
Add the eggs, orange flower water, and rose water to form a stiff paste.
Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a floured tin plate.
Bake for a short time until golden.

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.

Orange + rosetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together876 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together494 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

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: Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter: Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour in the crumb.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Currants: Provide fruity sweetness and small bursts of flavour throughout the cake.
Eggs: Bind the mixture and add moisture and richness to the paste.

Swap the orange

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Raspberryfits better
Orangethe original

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