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Dessert

Bury Simnel Cake

A fruit cake made with butter, sugar, flour, almonds, mixed peel, and eggs, baked and iced.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Bury Simnel 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.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter, sugar, and eggs together for 20 minutes.

  2. Add the ground almonds, flour, and mixed peel, and mix well.

Bake

  1. Grease and line tin hoops with white paper.

  2. Pour the mixture into the prepared hoops and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for about an hour or until done.

Finish

  1. Once the cakes are cold, cover them with icing.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and when creamed with sugar it traps air for lift.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Eggs
Provide structure and binding, and add richness and moisture to the batter.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Ground almonds
Add moisture, a tender crumb, and a nutty flavour.
Mixed peel
Adds citrus aroma and flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter, sugar, and eggs. Beating the fat with sugar traps air bubbles that help the cake rise. Under-creaming leaves the batter dense and heavy, so the crumb turns out tight rather than light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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

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