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Dessert

Eccles Cakes

A Scottish pastry filled with currants, sugar, spices, and butter, baked in short crust pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,331 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Eccles Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Make short crust pastry and roll it out.

  2. Cut the pastry into rounds.

  3. Place the rounds on a sugared paper.

Fill and shape

  1. Lay a spoonful of the currant mixture on each round.

  2. Close the rounds up.

  3. Make two slits in the top of each cake.

Bake

  1. Place the cakes on a greased baking tin.

  2. Bake for 10 minutes at 400°F (200°C).

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. Allspice + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  3. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Currant + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,983 recipes

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

  5. Currant + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

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

What each ingredient does

Currants
Provide the main filling, adding sweetness, moisture and a chewy texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the pastry brown during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the filling, keeping it soft and moist.
Short crust pastry
Forms the structure and crisp, tender case that holds the filling.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the currant filling.

The step that matters

Close the rounds up. The pastry edges must be sealed firmly around the filling. If the seal is weak, the juicy currant mixture can leak out and burn during baking, and the cakes may open up in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice, nutmeg, butter. 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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