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Dessert

Canadian Cake

A currant and candied peel cake flavored with sherry, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and sherry work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Canadian Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until soft.

  2. Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

  3. Chop the candied peel very finely and clean the currants.

Mix and bake

  1. Add the currants, florador, and sherry to the mixture.

  2. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then stir thoroughly.

  3. Turn the mixture into a large buttered cake tin.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour.

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. Currant + sherrytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sherry + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,505 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the cake's structure when its starches set during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and traps air when creamed with sugar.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft texture when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Cream the butter and sugar until soft. Beating air into the butter and sugar creates bubbles that help the cake rise and become light. Under-creamed butter leaves a dense, heavy crumb.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, sherry, butter, 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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