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Dessert

Reception Cake

A spiced almond and orange cake with currants, made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and allspice work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 727 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Reception 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour, ground almonds, butter, sugar, and orange rind.

  2. Add the eggs, currants, allspice, cinnamon, and citron; mix well.

  3. Pour the batter into a shallow, paper-lined cake pan.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until golden and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

  2. Decorate the cake as desired.

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. Orange + allspicetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together727 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  5. Almond + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it sets.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking, giving structure and lift.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps browning at the surface.
Ground almonds
Add moisture and a dense, tender texture to the crumb.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy fruit texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until golden and a toothpick comes out clean. Because the batter is rich with eggs, butter and fruit, underbaking leaves a wet, gummy center, while overbaking dries the crumb. The clean toothpick test shows the structure has set through.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, almond, butter, sugar, orange, egg, allspice):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, almond, butter, sugar, orange, egg, allspice. 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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