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Dessert

Yeast Cake

A yeast-leavened cake with currants, citron, candied orange peel, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,437 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Yeast 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 batter

  1. Combine flour, currants, butter, sugar, citron, orange peel, cinnamon, and mace in a large bowl.

  2. Make a cavity in the center and add sweet wine, warm milk, and yeast.

  3. Let the mixture stand until the yeast activates.

  4. Add a little more warm milk and mix all ingredients together.

Rise and bake

  1. Fill a hoop with the batter and let it rise until doubled in size.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°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. Orange + cinnamontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,437 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 batter together as it rises and bakes.
Yeast
Produces gas that makes the batter rise and gives the cake an airy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the finished cake.
Currants
Add sweetness, chewy texture, and fruity flavor throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the crust brown during baking.
Milk
Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form a workable dough.

The step that matters

Letting the yeast activate before mixing. Yeast must be fully active before the dough is mixed and shaped; if it is not foamy and active, the cake will fail to rise properly and become dense.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, currant, butter, sugar, orange, cinnamon, wine):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, currant, butter, sugar, orange, cinnamon, wine. 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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