Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Currant 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 batter
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, beat half of the sugar with the butter until creamy.
In another bowl, beat the egg yolks with the other half of the sugar.
Combine the butter mixture with the yolk mixture.
Stir in the flour and lemon extract.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
Gently fold the egg whites into the batter.
Dredge the currants with a little flour and fold them into the batter last.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-40 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
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.
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,227 recipes
Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).
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Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together7,856 recipes
Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).
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
- Eggs
- Whipped whites give lift and an airy crumb, while yolks add richness and structure.
- Butter
- Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds fat for a tender, rich texture.
- All-purpose flour
- Its proteins set during baking, giving the cake its structure.
- White granulated sugar
- Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps aerate the batter.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
- Currants
- Add tart, fruity bursts of flavor and moisture through the crumb.
The step that matters
Folding in the egg whites. Whipped whites hold the cake's air, so folding gently keeps them from deflating. Overmixing knocks out air and leads to a dense, flat cake.
Swap the currant
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, lemon, egg):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Currantthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, lemon, egg. 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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