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Dessert

A Sweet Cake

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Sweet Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the butter to a cream.

  2. Add the yolks and whites of the eggs, beaten separately.

  3. Mix in the sugar, flour, currants, citron, candied peels, almonds, cinnamon, nutmeg, and brandy.

  4. Beat all ingredients together until well combined.

Bake

  1. Bake in a buttered tin lined with buttered paper, ensuring the cake is 2 to 3 inches above the tin to prevent browning too quickly.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Their proteins set during baking to give the cake structure, and the yolks add richness.
Flour
Its proteins and starch set during baking to form the cake's main structure.
Sugar
Creams with butter to aid aeration and adds sweetness and gentle browning.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour and contributes a little moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Beating the batter until well combined. Creaming butter and sugar and beating the eggs in properly traps air that helps the cake rise and stay light. Under-mixing leaves streaks and a dense crumb, while over-beating after flour is added can toughen it.

Swap the currant

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

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

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