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Dessert

Lunch Cakes

A currant cake made with flour, lard, sugar, baking soda, cream of tartar, buttermilk, and lemon essence, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Lunch Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Sift baking soda and cream of tartar with flour.

  2. Rub lard into the flour and make a well in the center.

  3. Add sugar, currants, and a few drops of lemon essence.

  4. Pour in enough buttermilk to create a soft batter.

Bake and serve

  1. Grease sponge cake molds and fill them three-quarters full with batter.

  2. Brush the tops with egg and dust with castor sugar.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) 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.

  1. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together674 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the cakes as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar and buttermilk to produce gas that lifts the cakes.
Cream of tartar
Provides acid that reacts with the baking soda so the cakes rise.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and keeps the cakes short.
Buttermilk
Moistens the flour and adds acidity that activates the baking soda.
Currants
Add sweetness, chewy bursts of fruit, and moisture to the cakes.

The step that matters

Pour in the buttermilk gradually to a soft batter. Too much liquid makes the batter slack and the cakes spread or bake heavy, while too little leaves dry pockets of flour. Mix only until combined, since overworking develops gluten and toughens the crumb.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream, sugar, buttermilk, lemon, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream, sugar, buttermilk, lemon, 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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