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Dessert

Yorkshire Yule Cakes

A yeast-based cake with currants, raisins, nutmeg, cinnamon, and candied lemon, baked until light brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Yorkshire Yule Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix the sugar and flour in a large bowl.

  2. Dissolve the yeast in the milk and add to the mixture along with the melted butter.

  3. Knead into a dough and let it rise for 1 hour in a warm place.

  4. Stir in the currants, raisins, nutmeg, cinnamon, and candied lemon until well combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into cakes and mark the tops with a decorative pattern.

  2. Sprinkle sugar on top and bake until light brown.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 dough that holds the cake together as it rises and bakes.
Fresh brewers' yeast or german yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, softening the crumb and carrying flavor.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the dough.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise. Yeast needs a warm, sufficiently long rise to generate gas and lighten the dough. A cool or short rise leaves the cake dense, because the dough does not trap enough gas before baking.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, butter, milk, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, milk, raisin, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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