Skip to main content
Dessert

English Yule Cake

A sweet, fruit‑laden cake baked with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, currants, raisins, candied citrus, nuts, spices, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

English Yule Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Beat in the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  4. Stir in the sifted flour, currants, raisins, candied citron, candied lemon peel, chopped nuts, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  5. Add the wine and brandy, mixing until well combined.

Bake and store

  1. Pour the batter into square pans and cross with a knife before baking.

  2. Bake until golden brown, then break into pieces and store in a tin box.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving a light, tender crumb and rich flavour.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Sifted flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as the proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Currants
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating the butter and sugar until light and fluffy traps air that leavens the batter. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake, while adding eggs too quickly can cause the batter to separate.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipes