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Dessert

Irish Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, almonds, currants, flour, brandy, and lemon peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Almond and flour 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 ↓

Irish Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

  2. Sift in the sifted sugar and mix well.

  3. Add the yolks of the eggs, then fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Work the mixture for 1 hour.

  5. Gradually add the flour until fully combined.

  6. Stir in the brandy.

Bake

  1. Just before baking, fold in the currants, almonds, and lemon or citron peel.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake 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. Almond + flourtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Almond + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while beaten whites add lift and a lighter structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as the batter bakes.
Almonds
Add richness, flavour and a moist, nutty texture to the crumb.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Whites hold air only if they are beaten properly and folded in gently; overmixing knocks out the air, leaving a dense cake that rises less in the oven.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, almond, flour, brandy, lemon. 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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