Skip to main content
Dessert

Tea- Cakes

A baked cake made with flour, currants, sugar, eggs, dusted with sugar and optionally topped with almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Tea- Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make and shape the cakes

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, currants, sugar, and eggs to form a paste.

  2. Roll out the paste to about ½ inch thick.

  3. Use an inverted wine glass or small tumbler to stamp out cakes.

Finish

  1. Dust the tops with sugar and mix in chopped almonds if desired.

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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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
Provides the main structure that holds the paste together as the cakes set.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness to the paste.
Granulated sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the tops brown lightly in the oven.
Currants
Add moisture, chew and sweetness throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Rolling the paste to an even thickness. Rolling to about ½ inch thick gives cakes of even size that bake at the same rate. Thin spots can dry out or burn while thick spots stay doughy in the centre.

Swap the almond

The recipe marks almond as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, currant, sugar, egg):

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits less well
  4. Hazelnutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, currant, sugar, egg. 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 tea cakes recipes

Yorkshire 31Cream 8Afternoon 7Berry 7English 7Queen's 3 See all 209 →

You might also like

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesAlmond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipes