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Dessert

Rich Yeast Cake

A yeast cake made with currants, candied peel, and spices, baked at 350°F for 1.5 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange 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 ↓

Rich Yeast 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 sponge

  1. Prepare a sponge with equal parts of flour, sugar, milk, and yeast.

Mix and bake

  1. Once the sponge has rested, mix in the softened butter, currants, candied lemon peel, candied orange peel, nutmeg, allspice, and cinnamon.

  2. Pour the mixture into a greased hoop or cake pan.

  3. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1.5 hours.

Finish

  1. Optionally, ice the cake and decorate it as a Twelfth Cake.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Orange + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

Yeast
Ferments the sponge so the cake rises and gains a light, airy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderising the crumb and carrying flavour.
Currants
Provide pockets of sweetness and chewy fruit throughout the cake.
Candied lemon peel
Adds bright, tangy citrus aroma and flavour that cuts the richness.
Candied orange peel
Adds sweet citrus aroma and flavour that complements the lemon peel.
Flour
Forms the structure of the sponge that the cake is built on.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rest before mixing in the butter and fruit. The yeast needs time to build up gas and activity in the sponge. Adding the rich butter and fruit too early can weigh down the dough and slow the rise, so the cake may bake up dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, milk, butter, lemon, orange, 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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