Skip to main content
Dessert

Excellent Cheap Cake

A simple cake made with flour, butter, sugar, currants or sultanas, caraway seeds, and baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Excellent Cheap 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 the dough

  1. Sift together the tartaric acid, carbonate of soda, and flour.

  2. Rub in the butter until well combined.

  3. Add the sugar, currants or sultanas, and caraway seeds.

  4. Beat the egg and mix it with the milk.

  5. Combine all ingredients to form a dough.

Bake

  1. Place the dough in a buttered tin.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Tartaric acid
Reacts with carbonate of soda to release gas, lifting the cake without yeast.
Carbonate of soda
Produces carbon dioxide with the acid, causing the cake to rise and become light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Rubbed into the flour to add richness and a tender crumb.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure and richness.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and helps form the dough.

The step that matters

Combine the dough quickly. The acid and carbonate of soda begin reacting as soon as they are wet, so the dough should be mixed and placed in the tin without delay to trap the gas and get a good rise.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, caraway, egg, milk. 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.

More currant cake recipes

Raisin 6Rich 5Lemon 3 See all 192 →

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes