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Dessert

A Very Good Cheap Cake

A simple currant and candied peel cake made with flour, butter, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Very Good Cheap Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, combine flour, salt, and baking powder.

  2. Rub in the butter, dripping, or lard until the mixture resembles fine oatmeal.

  3. Add sugar, currants, candied peel, and grated nutmeg; mix thoroughly.

  4. Beat the mixture to a stiff paste with milk or water.

Bake and cool

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Pour the batter into a greased cake tin.

  3. Bake until a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean.

  4. Once baked, turn the cake out of the tin and let it cool on its side.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its gluten sets during baking.
Butter, dripping, or lard
Rubbed into the flour to tenderise the crumb and add richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes light.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the crust brown.
Currants
Provide chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beat the mixture to a stiff paste with milk or water. Too much liquid makes the batter loose and heavy, while too little leaves dry, crumbly cake. A stiff paste holds its shape and rises evenly in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

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

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