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Baking

Christmas Cakes

A sweet biscuit-like cake made with golden syrup, flour, butter, citron, almonds, cardamom, cinnamon, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cardamom and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,299 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Christmas Cakes

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.

Make the dough

  1. Dissolve baking soda in ½ cup of golden syrup.

  2. Boil the remaining golden syrup, then add warm butter, chopped citron, chopped almonds, cardamom seeds, cinnamon, chopped lemon peel, grated lemon rind, and lemon juice.

  3. Mix well and roll out the dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Cut with a small biscuit cutter and place a whole blanched almond on top of each cake.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) 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.

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. Cardamom + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,299 recipes

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

  2. Cardamom + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 recipes

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

  3. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + cardamomtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together457 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Golden syrup
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cakes brown as they bake.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cakes together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic syrup to release gas that helps the cakes rise.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda fully in the syrup. Baking soda needs to be evenly dispersed in the syrup to react evenly through the dough. Undissolved pockets can leave bitter spots and uneven rising.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (syrup, flour, butter, almond, cardamom, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against syrup, flour, butter, almond, cardamom, cinnamon. 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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