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Dessert

Plum Rock Cakes

A cake made with butter, flour, sugar, raisins, lemon and orange peel, ground almonds, and eggs, baked into rock-shaped pieces.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Plum Rock Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the butter, flour, sugar, raisins, lemon peel, orange peel, ground almonds, and lemon rind until well combined.

  2. Add the eggs and mix thoroughly.

Shape and bake

  1. Break the mixture into small pieces resembling rocks.

  2. Place the pieces on a baking tin and bake in the preheated oven 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the cakes hold together while baking.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the rocky shapes together as they bake.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and helps them brown to a golden color.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add moisture and structure to the cakes.
Ground almonds
Add moisture, nutty flavor, and a tender crumb to the cakes.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking at high heat sets the outside and browns the sugars and butter; pulling the cakes too early leaves them pale and doughy inside, while overbaking dries them out.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangethe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, raisin, lemon, almond, 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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