Skip to main content
Dessert

Currant Cake

A baked cake made with flour, butter, sugar, currants, eggs, brandy or rose-water, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the butter, sugar, and flour together in a bowl.

  3. Wash, pick, and dry the currants, then add them to the mixture.

  4. Beat the eggs and mix them in with the brandy or rose-water.

  5. Add enough milk to form a dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thin and cut it into cakes.

  2. Bake the cakes in the preheated oven 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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 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).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Rubbed into the flour to make the dough tender and rich.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the cakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes brown as they bake.
Currants
Add small bursts of fruit sweetness and chew throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Rolling the dough thin. Thin dough bakes through and turns golden at the edges before the center dries out. Thick cakes may stay doughy inside while the outside over-browns.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, egg, brandy, 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.

More currant cake recipes

Raisin 6Rich 5Lemon 3 See all 192 →

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipes