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Dessert

Portugal Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, rose water, sherry, eggs, currants, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Portugal Cakes

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 the batter

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

  2. Mix flour and sugar together.

  3. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles thick grated white bread.

  4. Add rose water, sack, and eggs; whip well with a whisk.

  5. Stir in the currants until evenly mixed.

Bake

  1. Butter the tin pans and fill them half full with the batter.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

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

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Rose + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sherry + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together393 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Rubbed into the flour and sugar, it coats the flour and gives the cakes a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Whipped into the batter, they add structure and help the cakes rise and set as they bake.
Fine flour
Forms the main structure of the cakes once it sets in the oven.
Loaf sugar
Sweetens the cakes and adds to the golden browning on the crust.
Currants
Add pockets of sweetness and chewy fruit through the cake.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking is judged by colour rather than time here, so the cakes can dry out if left too long or stay pale and doughy if removed too early. Browning shows the sugars and proteins have caramelised and the crumb has set.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, butter, rose, sherry, egg, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, rose, sherry, egg, almond. 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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