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Dessert

Birthday Cake

A large cake made with sugar, butter, currants, flour, candied peel, almonds, spices, lemon rind, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Birthday 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).

  2. Grease and line the cake pans with parchment paper.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the currants, flour, candied peel, almonds, spices, and lemon rind, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and then add them to the mixture along with the brandy.

  4. Pour the batter into the prepared pans and smooth the top.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake for 3 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  2. Let the cake cool completely before icing.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving a light, tender crumb and richness.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft texture when creamed with butter.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Baking time and doneness check. A long bake at moderate heat sets the large batter slowly; testing the center with a toothpick confirms it is cooked through, since an underbaked center will sink and stay gummy.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, almond, lemon, egg, brandy. 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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