Skip to main content
Dessert

Sweet Cakes

A sweet cake made from soaked French roll slices, eggs, butter, nutmeg, lemon essence, sugar, currants, baked in a puff pastry crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sweet Cakes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bread

  1. Slice the French roll very thinly.

  2. Pour boiling milk over the slices and let it cool.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a bowl, mix the cooled milk with eggs, melted butter, nutmeg, lemon essence, sugar, and currants.

  2. Pour the mixture into a prepared puff pastry crust.

  3. Bake as you would for other cheese cakes.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

French roll
Forms the bulk of the cake and soaks up the milk to become soft and custard-like.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set it into a firm, sliceable custard when baked.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the filling a softer, moister texture.
Milk
Softens the bread and adds moisture to the filling.
Currants
Provide small pockets of sweetness and chewy fruit throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps it brown lightly in the oven.

The step that matters

Cooling the soaked bread before mixing. If the milk is still hot when the eggs go in, the eggs can scramble instead of blending smoothly. Letting the milk cool first keeps the filling smooth so it sets into an even custard.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Orangefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, butter, nutmeg, lemon, sugar. 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.

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipes