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Dessert

A Russian Cake

A yeast‑leavened cake made with butter, eggs, currants, citron, lemon zest, and whipped cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

A Russian 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 the paste

  1. Combine 1½ pounds sifted flour, ½ ounce coarse sea salt, 6 ounces sifted sugar, 1 ounce pounded aniseeds, and 2 pounds softened butter in a bowl.

  2. Add 12 whole eggs, 12 egg yolks, grated lemon zest, 6 ounces dried currants, 2 ounces sliced citron, and 1 pint whipped cream.

Make the sponge

  1. In a separate bowl, make a sponge with 1½ pounds sifted flour, 1¼ ounces yeast, ½ ounce coarse sea salt, and a little warm milk.

Knead, rise and bake

  1. Once the sponge has risen, combine it with the paste and knead into a dough.

  2. Place the dough in a warm spot and let it rise, then bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 2 hours.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, binding the dough and giving it a tender crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
Yeast
Produces gas in the sponge so the dough rises and becomes light.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, lightening the texture when whipped.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during baking.

The step that matters

Let the sponge rise fully before kneading. Yeast needs time to build gas and activity in the sponge. Combining it with the heavy butter and egg paste before it has risen can leave the dough dense, because the rich mixture slows gas retention and the cake will not lift well.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, lemon, butter, cream, milk. 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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