Name: Nut Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup butter; 1½ cups sugar; 3 cups flour; 2 cups currants; 4 eggs; 2 teaspoons baking powder; citron to taste; nuts to taste (almonds especially good); ½ teaspoon coarse sea salt

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 ↓

Nut Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

Beat the eggs and add the sugar.
Rub the butter into the flour.
Add the currants and nuts.
Sift the baking powder into the flour mixture.
Combine all ingredients and mix well.

Bake

Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.
Bake until golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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.

Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nuts + almondtop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together394 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + nutstop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,180 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: Rubbed into the flour, it coats flour particles and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs: Beaten, they add structure and moisture and help bind the batter.
Flour: Forms the main structure of the cake once it is mixed with liquid and baked.
Baking powder: Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Currants: Add concentrated sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the cake.

Swap the currant

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

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