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Dessert

Tea Cakes

Tea Cakes are small currant cakes made with butter, flour, currants, sugar, eggs, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Tea Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub the butter into the flour until well combined.

Make and shape the dough

  1. Mix in the currants, sugar, egg yolks, egg whites, and brandy.

  2. Roll the dough thin and cut into shapes using a wine glass or tumbler.

Bake and serve

  1. Place on a baking sheet and bake until golden.

  2. Let cool before serving.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + flourtop 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. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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 main structure of the dough once combined with fat and eggs.
Butter
Rubbed into flour to add tenderness and a crumbly, rich texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cakes take on golden browning in the oven.
Egg yolks
Add richness and fat, helping bind the dough and give a tender crumb.
Egg whites
Add moisture and help bind the dough together.
Currants
Add sweetness, chewy texture and dried-fruit flavour throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Thin dough and sugar brown quickly, so the cakes can go from golden to burnt within minutes. Watching colour rather than just the clock helps them stay tender and evenly browned.

Swap the currant

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

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

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