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Dessert

Whortleberry Cake

A sweet baked cake made with eggs, sugar, butter, flour, meal, brandy, allspice, baking soda, sweet milk, and whortleberries.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Whortleberry 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, sugar, butter, flour, sifted meal, brandy, allspice, and baking soda.

  2. Combine the baking soda with the sweet milk and add to the mixture.

  3. Just before baking, gently fold in the whortleberries dusted with flour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan 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.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,302 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its starches set.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and contributes to browning in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Whortleberries or blueberries
Add juicy pockets of fruit that release moisture and flavor into the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the whortleberries. Fold them in gently and only just before baking. Overmixing breaks the batter's air and gluten structure, and dusting the berries with flour helps keep them suspended rather than sinking to the bottom.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

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