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Dessert

Easter Cakes, or Flat Simnels

A sweet, spiced cake with currants, sultanas, and candied peel, baked into flat rounds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Easter Cakes, or Flat Simnels

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

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Sift in the flour, baking powder, ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon, then fold in the currants, sultanas, and candied peel.

Shape and glaze

  1. Roll out the dough to nearly 1 inch thick and cut into rounds 6 to 8 inches in diameter.

  2. Brush the tops with beaten egg and sift sugar over them.

  3. Return to the oven for 1 minute to glaze.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Ginger + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Ginger + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 richness and a tender texture to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a soft, fine crumb when creamed.
Eggs
Bind the batter, add moisture, and give structure to the cake.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.
Currants
Add moisture, sweetness, and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating butter and sugar until light and fluffy traps air in the fat. These air bubbles expand in the oven and help the cake rise with a light crumb. If the mixture is underbeaten, the cake may turn out dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, 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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