Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
English Pound Cake
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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Line a round cake tin with buttered parchment paper.
Make the batter
Cream the butter in a large bowl.
Add the sugar and mix well.
In a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks and add them to the mixture.
Gradually mix in the flour, currants, candied peel, and almonds.
Whisk the egg whites until stiff and fold them into the batter.
Beat the mixture for 20 minutes.
Bake
Pour the batter into the prepared tin and bake for 2 to 2.5 hours.
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.
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Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together8,673 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together9,245 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Currant + macetop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,791 recipes
Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Butter and flour 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
- Eggs
- Egg whites trapped by whisking lighten the batter, and yolks add richness and structure as it sets.
- All-purpose flour
- Flour provides the structure that holds the cake together as the batter sets.
- Unsalted butter
- Creamed butter adds fat and tenderness and helps carry air into the batter.
- Granulated sugar
- Sugar adds sweetness and, creamed with butter, helps create a fine, tender crumb.
- Currants
- Currants add moisture-rich pockets of fruit and a sweet, chewy texture.
The step that matters
Folding in the egg whites. Whisked egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; stirring vigorously deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.
Swap the mace
The recipe marks mace as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, currant, egg, almond):
- Cinnamonfits better
- Nutmegfits better
- Allspicefits better
- Macethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, sugar, currant, egg, 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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