The Original Curran Cake Recipe

Many of our friends recently had a chance to taste our Scottish Curran Cake recipe when we provided cakes for a breakfast at a chilly, rainy camping event. Responding to the clamor for more information, we provide here the original recipe that inspired our Scottish Curran Cake.

“Currant Cakes”

A Curran cake sliced. It is not tall, but it is rich. Photo: Shanti K.

Mrs. McLintock’s Receipts for Cookery and Pastry-Work  1736
To make Curran-cakes

Take a lib. Of Sugar, 10 Eggs, beat them till they be thick and white, take a lib. Of sweet Butter, beat it till it turn like Cream, put in a lib. Of Flour, a lib. Of Currans, among the beaten Sugar and Eggs; then put in the butter, mix them all together, with a little Brandy, and put it in the Frame, and send it to the Oven.

This is very similar to Kenelm Digby’s earlier English cake recipe (pre 1665)
EXCELLENT SMALL CAKES

Take three pound of very fine flower well dryed by the fire, and put to it a pound and half of loaf Sugar sifted in a very fine sieve and dryed; Three pounds of Currants well washed and dryed in a cloth and set by the fire; When your flower is well mixed with the Sugar and Currants, you must put in it a pound and half of unmelted butter, ten spoonfuls of Cream, with the yolks of three new-laid Eggs beat with it, one Nutmeg; and if you please, three spoonfuls of Sack. When you have wrought your paste well, you must put it in a cloth, and set it in a dish before the fire, till it be through warm. Then make them up in little Cakes, and prick them full of holes; you must bake them in a quick oven unclosed. Afterwards Ice them over with Sugar. The Cakes should be about the bigness of a hand-breadth and thin: of the cise of the Sugar Cakes sold at Barnet.

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