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Dessert

Currant Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, currants, eggs, flour, brandy, and candied citrus.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and brandy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,057 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Currant Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the butter and sugar

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Gradually add the sugar while beating.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites and yolks together.

  2. Combine the egg mixture with the creamed butter and sugar.

  3. Fold in the flour and currants.

  4. Add the brandy and candied orange and citron, mixing until light.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into pans and bake.

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. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Currant + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,034 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Brandy + orangetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,706 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps hold air in the creamed butter for a lighter texture.
Eggs
Add structure, moisture and richness, and help the batter rise and set when baked.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Currants
Add concentrated sweetness and fruit flavour, and moisture pockets throughout the crumb.
Brandy
Adds aroma and a warm, boozy flavour that carries through the baked cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the flour and currants. Fold gently and only until combined. Overmixing flour develops gluten, which makes the cake tough, and gentle folding keeps the batter's trapped air so the cake stays light.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, currant, egg, flour, brandy. 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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