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Dessert

Yule Cakes

A yeasted butter cake with currants, candied peel, sugar, and nutmeg, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Yule Cakes

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 dough

  1. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl.

  2. Cream the yeast with 1 teaspoon of sugar until liquid, then add ½ pint of lukewarm water.

  3. Pour the yeast mixture into the center of the flour and work into a dough.

  4. Cover with a cloth and place in a warm area to rise.

Enrich and bake

  1. Beat the butter until creamy, then add it to the risen dough along with the sugar, cleaned currants, chopped candied peel, grated nutmeg, and beaten eggs.

  2. Mix everything well and fill buttered tins halfway.

  3. Let the cakes rise again, then bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  4. Once baked, turn out and let cool.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flour
Forms the dough's structure once worked with the liquid and yeast.
German yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise, giving the cakes a light texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough together.
Currants
Provide fruit sweetness and chewy bites throughout the cake.
Moist sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture while browning during baking.

The step that matters

Let the cakes rise again before baking. Yeast needs time to produce gas after the fruit and butter are mixed in. Baking before the cakes have risen again leaves them dense, because the gas that lightens the crumb has not yet built up.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, egg, sugar, nutmeg. 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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