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Dessert

Fairy Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, sultanas, currants, candied peel, and flavored with lemon extract and annatto.

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 ↓

Fairy 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 together the butter, sugar, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Add the flour, baking soda, currants, candied peel, and sultanas.

  3. Mix everything together thoroughly with a wooden spoon.

  4. Stir in the milk.

  5. Add the lemon extract and annatto for flavor.

Bake

  1. Grease a large square cake tin that is nearly an inch deep.

  2. Spread the mixture evenly in the tin.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 20 minutes.

Finish

  1. Once cooled, cover with icing.

  2. Cut into penny squares or diamond shapes.

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. Cream + buttertop 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. Flour + buttertop 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).

Flour and butter 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and set during baking to give structure and richness.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavor.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the batter so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and keeps the crumb soft.

The step that matters

Spread the mixture evenly in the tin. An uneven layer of batter bakes unevenly, leaving thin parts overbaked and thick parts raw or sunken in the middle.

Swap the currant

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

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

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