Name: Hermit Cake
Ingredients: 1 cup sugar; ⅔ cup currants; ½ cup butter; 1 teaspoon cinnamon; 1 teaspoon clove; 1 nutmeg, grated; ⅓ cup milk; flour, for rolling

Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Hermit 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 dough

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.
Add the currants, cinnamon, clove, and grated nutmeg; mix well.
Stir in the milk and enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled out thin.

Shape and bake

Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.
Brush the tops with cream and dust with sugar before baking.
Bake until golden brown.

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.

Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,189 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).
Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together8,686 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 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

Butter: Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender texture.
Sugar: Sweetens the dough and helps it brown during baking.
Currants: Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the dough.
Milk: Adds moisture so the flour can form a rollable dough.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the dough together when rolled and cut.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, butter, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, milk, flour):

Vanillafits better
Raisinfits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, milk, flour. 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.