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Dessert

Portugal Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, rose water, white wine, eggs, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Portugal 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 batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour and sugar.

  3. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles crumbled bread.

  4. Add the rose water, white wine, and eggs; whisk until well combined.

  5. Fold in the currants.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter small tin pans and fill them halfway with the batter.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Allow to 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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Rose + curranttop 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. White wine + curranttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together276 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Butter
Rubbed into the flour and sugar, it coats the flour and gives the cakes a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the batter and, as they set in the oven, give the cakes structure and lift.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes as its proteins and starches set during baking.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown as they bake.
Currants
Add pockets of concentrated sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Small tin cakes can go from golden to dry quickly. Browning comes from the Maillard reaction and caramelization, so pull them as soon as the color is right to keep them moist.

Swap the currant

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

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

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