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Dessert

Iced Cake

A sweet cake made with flour, currants, sugar, almonds, butter, eggs, and spices, finished with white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Iced 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.

Prepare

  1. Blanch and split the sweet and bitter almonds.

  2. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a bowl.

Make the batter

  1. Warm the butter in a clean bowl.

  2. Add the sugar and beat until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.

  4. Incorporate the remaining ingredients and mix the batter well.

  5. Pour the mixture into a greased and paper-lined round cake tin.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for about 1.5 hours.

  2. Once cooled, cover with white icing and decorate the 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Clove + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,605 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Almond + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake's crumb as the batter bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, beaten with butter, helps trap air for a lighter crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acids to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Currants
Add fruit sweetness and moisture to the cake's texture.

The step that matters

Beating the sugar and butter until creamy. Beating creams the fat and sugar together, trapping air bubbles that expand in the oven and give a lighter crumb. Under-beating leaves a denser cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, currant, sugar, clove, almond, butter, 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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