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Dessert

Modern Cookery

A pastry cake filled with currants, candied orange and lemon rinds, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Modern Cookery

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle 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).

Assemble

  1. Roll out half of the pastry dough into a thin square.

  2. Spread the mixed fruit and spices evenly on the dough.

  3. Moisten the edges and cover with the other half of the rolled dough.

  4. Press the edges together and mark into 2‑inch by 3‑inch sections.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until golden.

  2. Cut into cakes while warm and serve hot or cold.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Beef + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,847 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Currants
Provide the sweet, chewy fruit filling that gives the cakes their body and flavour.
Flour
Forms the pastry structure that holds the filling and bakes up firm and golden.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender, rich pastry that browns well in the oven.
Beef suet
Adds fat that keeps the filling moist and rich during baking.
Macaroons or ratafias
Add almond-like sweetness and a chewy texture to the filling.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Blackberryfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, orange, lemon, butter, flour. 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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