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Dessert

Eccles Cake

A small sweet pastry filled with currants, nutmeg, lemon peel, and sugar, wrapped in puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Eccles Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot 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).

  2. In a bowl, mix currants, nutmeg, lemon peel, and sugar.

Assemble

  1. Roll out the puff pastry to the size of a small plate and about 1 inch thick.

  2. Place a tablespoon of the mixture in the center of the pastry.

  3. Cover with another piece of pastry and seal the edges.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden 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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  2. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Puff pastry
Forms flaky, layered structure that puffs and browns as it bakes.
Currants
Provide chewy texture and concentrated sweetness within the filling.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pastry brown in the oven.
Nutmeg
Adds warm, aromatic spice to the filling.
Lemon peel
Adds bright aroma that balances the sweetness of the currants and sugar.

The step that matters

Seal the edges. A tight seal keeps the juicy filling from leaking out and burning on the baking sheet. It also traps steam so the pastry layers rise properly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, lemon, sugar. 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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