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Dessert

Portugal, or Heart Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, sugar, butter, rose water, brandy, currants, and eggs, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Brandy and currant are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Portugal, or Heart Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA brisk oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a brisk oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Mix flour, sugar, and butter to a fine batter using your hands or a whisk.

  2. Add rose water, brandy, currants, and whisked eggs; mix well.

Bake

  1. Butter tin molds and fill them three-quarters full with the mixture.

  2. Bake in a brisk oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden.

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. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Rose + curranttop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together494 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Rose + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together560 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 holds the cakes together as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes brown in the oven.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and lift as they set in the heat.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and contributes to golden browning in the oven.
Currants
Add fruitiness and chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Fill the tins three-quarters full. Batter rises as it bakes, so overfilling can cause spill-over and uneven cooking, while underfilling yields flat, dry cakes. Leaving room for the rise helps the cakes bake evenly.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, butter, rose, brandy, 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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