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Dessert

Rock Cakes

Rock Cakes are a sweet baked treat made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, currants, spices, brandy, and topped with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Rock Cakes

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rock Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, powdered sugar, and softened butter until creamy.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, washed currants, nutmeg, grated lemon peel, pounded mace, and brandy. Mix well.

Shape and bake

  1. Prepare baking sheets by dusting with flour.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the stiff batter onto the baking sheets, leaving rough tops.

  3. Top each cake with sliced blanched almonds.

  4. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until lightly colored.

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.

  1. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

Dried flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set.
Dried currants
Add chewy sweetness and fruitiness throughout the cakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it cream with the butter.

The step that matters

Drop the batter in rough spoonfuls. The batter is stiff, so the cakes keep their shape rather than spreading. Leaving the tops rough gives the irregular surface that gives rock cakes their name and lets the surface brown unevenly in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, egg, nutmeg, lemon, mace. 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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