Skip to main content
Dessert

Cornish Heavy Cake

A dense cake made with flour, currants, salt, and clotted cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 20% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 30,481 recipes. Both carry acetaldehyde, which smells pungent, ethereal. The science ↓

Cornish Heavy Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, currants, and salt.

  2. Add the clotted cream and mix until you have a smooth paste.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough to a thickness of 1¼ inches.

  2. Score the top and bake for 35 to 45 minutes until thoroughly cooked.

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 + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

  2. Flour + curranttop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,077 recipes
  3. Currant + creamtop 32% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,829 recipes

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake once it is mixed with liquid and baked.
Currants
Add sweetness and chewy pockets of fruit throughout the cake.
Clotted cream
Adds fat and moisture, making the dough rich and tender.

The step that matters

Bake until thoroughly cooked. The cake is thick, so the centre can stay doughy if baked too briefly. Baking until fully set, and checking that the centre is cooked through, ensures the flour and dairy are properly set.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, cream):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, cream. 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

Red Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipesCurrant SherbetCurrant Sherbet9 recipesCurrant and Raspberry IceCurrant and Raspberry Ice7 recipes