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Dessert

Drop Cakes

Drop Cakes are small cakes made with flour, butter, sugar, currants, eggs, and flavored with orange‑flower water, rose water, sweet wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Drop Cakes

Why it works: Orange and rose work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 876 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Drop Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. Mix flour, butter, sugar, and currants in a bowl.

  2. Wet the mixture into a stiff paste with eggs and the flavorings.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a floured tin plate.

  2. Bake for a short time until done.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Orange + rosetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together876 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Currant + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,323 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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
Provides the main structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown as they bake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and contributes to browning at the surface.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and moisture to the paste.
Currants
Add fruit flavor, sweetness, and chewy pockets throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Wet the mixture into a stiff paste. The paste must be stiff enough to hold its shape when dropped. If it is too loose, the spoonfuls will spread flat on the tin as they bake.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Raspberryfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, currant, egg, rose, wine. 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.

More drop cakes recipes

Rye 35Ginger 25Wheat 9Cornmeal 8Oatmeal 8Chocolate 7 See all 98 →

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