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Dessert

A Sweet Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, eggs, sugar, flour, currants, citron, candied peel, almonds, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Sweet Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

  2. Add the yolks and whites of the eggs, beaten separately.

  3. Mix in the sugar, flour, currants, citron, candied peels, almonds, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brandy.

  4. Beat all ingredients well together.

Bake

  1. Bake in a buttered tin lined with buttered paper, filling the tin to 2-3 inches above the rim to prevent browning too quickly.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Set the structure as they cook, and the separately beaten whites add lightness.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its body and structure.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the butter hold air when creamed.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and moisture, along with their fruity flavour.
Almonds
Their oils add richness and a nutty aroma that carries through the crumb.

The step that matters

Filling the tin above the rim. A deep batter insulates the surface, so the top browns more slowly while the centre cooks through. Filling it too shallowly risks a dark crust before the middle sets.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, flour, orange, lemon, almond. 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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