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Dessert

Plain Pound or Currant Cake

A pound cake made with eggs, sugar, flour, butter, currants, candied peel, and optional brandy or caraway seeds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and caraway match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,435 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plain Pound or Currant 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  3. Add the sugar to the creamed butter and mix well.

  4. Incorporate the yolks of the eggs one at a time, mixing thoroughly.

Make the batter

  1. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  2. Stir in the currants and candied peel.

  3. Gradually add the flour, mixing until just combined.

  4. If desired, add the brandy and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake for nearly 2 hours, or 1 hour for half the quantity.

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 + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Butter + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,127 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter, and beaten whites lighten its structure as it bakes.
Butter
Creaming butter with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air in the creamed butter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Currants
Add fruit pieces and sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Egg whites hold air that lifts the batter. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous stirring deflates it, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the caraway

The recipe marks caraway as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, butter, currant, brandy):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Carawaythe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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