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Dessert

Rich Currant Cakes

A sweet cake made with currants, sultanas, almond paste, and lemon peel, baked in a moderate oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Rich Currant Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  3. Mix in the flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, volatile salts, essence of lemon, currants, sultanas, and lemon peel.

  4. Gradually add the milk to form a light paste.

Bake

  1. Line cake tins with paper and fill them halfway with the mixture.

  2. Add a layer of almond paste (½ inch thick) on top of the first layer of mixture, then pour the remaining mixture on top.

  3. Bake in a moderate oven (350°F / 175°C) for about an hour.

Decorate and finish

  1. Once cooled, place almond paste (½ inch wide and thick) around the top and fill the center with large colored sweets.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cakes a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set during baking.
Currants
Provide chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the crumb.
Cream of tartar
Reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to help the cakes rise.

The step that matters

Layering the almond paste. The almond paste layer sits between batter layers; if the batter is too thin or spread unevenly, the paste can sink or bake unevenly. Keeping the layers level helps the cakes bake evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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