Skip to main content
Baking

Rock Cakes

A sweet cake made with flour, powdered sugar, butter, eggs, currants, spices, brandy, and topped with almonds.

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

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Rock Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA slack oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slack oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the dried flour and powdered sugar.

  2. Add the softened butter and beat until creamy.

  3. Incorporate the beaten eggs and washed currants, mixing well.

  4. Flavor the mixture with nutmeg, grated lemon peel, pounded mace, and brandy.

Shape and bake

  1. Prepare baking sheets by sprinkling a little flour on them.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of the stiff batter onto the baking sheets.

  3. Top each cake with sliced blanched almonds.

  4. Bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven until light in color.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Currant + macetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,791 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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

Dried flour
Provides the structure that holds the cakes together as they bake.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through fat that is beaten into the batter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Dried currants
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it cream smoothly with the butter.

The step that matters

Beating the butter and sugar until creamy. Beating softened butter with sugar traps air in the fat, which helps the cakes rise lightly. Under-beaten butter gives dense, heavy rock cakes.

Swap the currant

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

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

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

More rock cakes recipes

Coconut 5Orange 3 See all 75 →

You might also like

Currant CookiesCurrant Cookies8 recipesDelicate CakeDelicate Cake246 recipesBoiled FrostingBoiled Frosting69 recipesCitron CakeCitron Cake68 recipes