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Simnel Cake

A fruit cake made with flour, butter, yeast, citron, candied lemon peel, spices, egg yolks, milk, currants, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg 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 ↓

Simnel Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter into the flour.

  2. Add the yeast and lukewarm milk, mixing to form a dough.

  3. Set the dough to rise in a warm place for two hours.

Prepare and mix

  1. Clean the currants and chop the candied peel.

  2. Mix the spices with the sugar and warm the dry ingredients slightly.

  3. Once the dough has risen, beat in the yolks and add the remaining ingredients.

Bake

  1. Bake for two hours, starting in a moderately hot oven and then reducing the heat.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 cake as the dough sets around it.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating the flour.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, lightening the dough before baking.
Egg yolks
Add richness, colour and binding to the enriched dough.
Currants
Provide sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the crumb.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Bake in a moderately hot oven, then reduce the heat. Starting hot sets the crust and lets the yeast rise further, while lowering the heat afterward lets the centre cook through without over-browning the outside.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg, egg, 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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