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Dessert

Rock Cakes

A sweet biscuit made with flour, raisins, butter, egg, milk, ginger, sugar, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Rock Cakes

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 ↓

Rock Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Combine flour and sugar in a bowl.

  2. Rub in the butter.

  3. Add the washed and dried raisins, baking powder, and ginger. Mix well.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the egg and add 2 to 3 tablespoons of milk. Mix until just wet.

Shape and bake

  1. Grease the oven tin.

  2. Warm the oven tin.

  3. Place small portions of the mixture onto the tin, leaving an inch between each.

  4. Dust with sugar.

  5. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for about 10 minutes.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + sugartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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
Rubbed into the flour to add tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds structure and moisture.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and stay light.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.

The step that matters

Mixing in the milk. Adding only enough liquid to just wet the dough keeps it stiff enough to hold its rough shape. Overmixing develops gluten, which makes the cakes tough and dense.

Swap the ginger

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

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