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Dessert

Cornish Currant Cake

A baked cake made with butter or lard, flour, currants, lemon peel, sugar, eggs, milk, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Cornish Currant Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

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

  2. Mix the flour, salt, and baking powder in a bowl.

  3. Rub in the butter or lard until well combined.

  4. Add the sugar, currants, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

Make and bake

  1. Beat the eggs with the milk and mix into the dry ingredients to form a stiff mixture.

  2. Place the mixture on a floured baking sheet and roll out to about ½ inch thick.

  3. Make several incisions on top with a knife.

  4. Bake for about 40 minutes.

  5. Brush the top with egg white and sprinkle with sugar.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the starches set in the oven.
Butter or lard
Coats the flour particles, giving the cake a tender, short crumb.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add richness and structure as they set.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the cake rise.
Castor sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the top brown as it bakes.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and brings the dough together.

The step that matters

Rub in the butter or lard until well combined. The fat must be evenly distributed among the flour particles so it coats them. This limits gluten development and keeps the crumb tender rather than tough.

Swap the currant

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

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

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