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Dessert

Easter Cakes, or Flat Simnels

A sweet, ginger-spiced cake with sultanas and currants, 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.

Make the dough

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

  2. Add the flour, baking powder, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, sultanas, currants, and chopped candied peel.

  3. Mix in the eggs until well combined; add more flour if the mixture is too wet.

Shape and bake

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

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

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

  4. 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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown and become tender when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure as they set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and become lighter.
Sultanas
Add sweetness and moisture as they plump during baking.

The step that matters

Adding more flour to the dough. Too much liquid from the eggs makes the mixture soft and hard to shape, while too much flour makes the cakes dry and dense. Add flour gradually and only as needed until the dough holds its shape.

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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