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Dessert

Devonshire Cake

A yeasted cake made with flour, butter or clotted cream, sugar, currants, lemon peel, nutmeg, eggs, milk, saffron, and fresh yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Devonshire Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

  1. In an earthenware pan, combine the flour and rub in the clotted cream or softened butter.

  2. Add the sugar, currants, lemon peel, and nutmeg, and mix well.

  3. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture along with the warm milk, saffron, and yeast.

  4. Mix all ingredients together thoroughly and cover the pan.

  5. Let the mixture sit overnight.

Bake and serve

  1. The next morning, divide the mixture into tins that hold about 1½ pounds each.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 1½ 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Forms the structure of the cake's crumb.
Clotted cream or butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating the flour and carrying fat into the crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rest, lightening the dough before baking.
Moist sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Currants
Add fruit sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Overnight rest. The yeast needs time to ferment the dough and produce gas. Resting it long enough lets the cake rise and become light, while covering the pan keeps the surface from drying out.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, egg, milk):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, sugar, lemon, nutmeg, 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.

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