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Baking

Rock Cakes

A small cake made with flour, clarified dripping, currants, sugar, egg, milk, mixed peel, salt, baking powder, and optional nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Rock Cakes

Why it works: Flour and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. 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) and grease a baking tin.

  2. Wash the currants and beat the egg with a little of the milk.

Make the mixture

  1. Beat the clarified dripping until creamy, then gradually add the dry ingredients along with the egg and milk mixture, beating continuously.

  2. Add just enough milk to form a stiff paste; the cakes should have a rocky appearance.

Bake

  1. Drop the mixture onto the tin in small rough heaps using two forks.

  2. Bake for about 15 minutes 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.

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 + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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 main structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Clarified dripping
Adds fat that makes the cakes tender and rich in texture.
Egg
Binds the mixture and adds richness and structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cakes rise and become light.
Milk
Moistens the dry ingredients into a stiff paste that holds its shape.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the cakes.

The step that matters

Add just enough milk to form a stiff paste. Too much milk makes the mixture slack, so the heaps spread on the tin instead of keeping their rough, rocky shape. Too little leaves dry, crumbly patches that do not hold together.

Swap the nutmeg

The recipe marks nutmeg as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, currant, sugar, egg, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, currant, sugar, 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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