Name: Another Way to Make Currant Cakes
Ingredients: 6 ounces currants; 6 ounces pounded loaf sugar; a little grated nutmeg; ½ pound butter; ¾ pound dried and sifted flour; 3 beaten egg yolks; 2-3 tablespoons rose or orange-flower water

Why it works: Nutmeg and flour 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 ↓

Another Way to Make Currant 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 the dough

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, rub the butter into the flour until well mixed.
Add the currants, sugar, nutmeg, egg yolks, and rose or orange-flower water. Mix until combined and form a dough.

Shape and bake

Roll out the dough and cut into round cakes using a glass or tin.
Place the cakes on a baking sheet and bake until golden.

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.

Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Currant + rosetop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together494 recipes

Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Nutmeg + rosetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,067 recipes

Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).
Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter: Adds richness and tenderness, keeping the cakes short and crumbly.
Flour: Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Egg yolks: Bind the dough and add richness and colour to the cakes.
Currants: Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cakes.
Pounded loaf sugar: Sweetens the dough and helps the cakes brown as they bake.

Swap the currant

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Lemonfits better
Currantthe original

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