Name: Yule Cake
Ingredients: 13 lb flour; ½ lb melted butter; 3 lb currants; 2 lb sugar; 23 oz candied lemon peel or citron; ⅓ cup cream; 2 oz crushed almonds; 2 eggs

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, currants, candied lemon peel, and crushed almonds.

Make the batter

Add the melted butter, eggs, and cream to the dry ingredients.
Beat the mixture well until combined.

Bake

Pour the batter into a flat dish and bake until golden brown.

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.

Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,673 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together5,655 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together9,245 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour: Forms the structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Eggs: Bind the batter and help give the cake its set structure.
Melted butter: Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown in the oven.
Cream: Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Currants: Add sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cake.

Swap the currant

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

Raisinfits better
Vanillafits better
Figfits better
Currantthe original

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