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Dessert

Rock Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, dripping, sugar, currants, egg, peel, and baking powder, baked at 400°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Rock Cakes

Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

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. Rub the dripping and flour together in a bowl.

  2. Stir in the sugar, currants, baking powder, and peel.

  3. Beat the egg and pour it into the mixture.

  4. Mix until a very stiff dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Take rough pieces of dough and place them on a greased baking tray.

  2. Bake for 15 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 + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Currant + eggtop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes

Flour and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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.
Dripping
Rubbed into the flour, it adds fat that tenderises the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during baking.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds moisture and structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven so the cakes rise and lighten.

The step that matters

Mix until a very stiff dough forms. A stiff dough holds its rough shape on the tray. Overmixing or adding too much liquid makes it spread and bake flat and dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, 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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