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Dessert

Whisked Eggs Cake

A light cake made with eggs, flour, butter, sugar, milk, currants, baking soda, and nutmeg or lemon rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Whisked Eggs Cake

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.

Make the batter

  1. Whisk eggs in a bowl and add grated nutmeg or lemon rind.

  2. Stir in the currants and mix well.

  3. Add flour, butter, sugar, and boiling milk, and beat the mixture lightly.

  4. Sift in the baking soda and beat again for 3 to 4 minutes.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into a buttered mold and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 to 1.25 hours.

  2. If divided into two molds, bake each for about 45 minutes.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten the crumb.
Currants
Add fruit pieces, moisture and a sweet-tart flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating in the baking soda. Baking soda needs to be evenly distributed and beaten in so it reacts throughout the batter; uneven mixing can leave pockets of bitterness or uneven rising.

Swap the currant

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

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

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