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Dessert

Raspberry and Black Currant Cakes

A dried fruit cake made from raspberry and black currant pulp and powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 2 ingredients
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Why it works: Black currant and sugar work together. They rank in the top 22% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 393 recipes. Both carry 1-penten-3-one, which smells fish, pungent. The science ↓

Raspberry and Black Currant Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fruit paste

  1. Place the fruit pulp in a pan over low heat.

  2. Stir until the pulp thickens and flaps against the sides of the pan. Once done, the bottom of the pan will show when moved.

  3. Remove from heat and mix in powdered sugar.

Shape and dry

  1. Roll out the mixture on wafer paper.

  2. Place on a tray and cover with wafer paper or press into tin molds.

  3. Dry in a cool place for one day.

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. Black currant + sugartop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Raspberries and black currants
Provide the fruit flavour and the pectin-rich pulp that thickens into a firm paste as it cooks.
Powdered loaf sugar
Sweetens the paste and helps it set firm as it dries.

The step that matters

Cooking the pulp until it thickens. The pulp must be stirred over low heat until it thickens and the pan bottom shows when moved. Under-cooked pulp stays too wet to hold its shape and dry properly, while over-heating can scorch the fruit and sugar.

“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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