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Dessert

Black Cake

A dense fruit cake made with raisins, currants, citrus peel, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Black 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 your oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the flour, raisins, currants, citron, orange peel, lemon peel, cinnamon, cloves, and grated nutmeg.

  4. Mix in the brandy until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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 + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + orangetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,684 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense batter together as it bakes.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Light brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a caramel-like depth of flavor.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb as it bakes.
Raisins
Add chewy moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor and helps keep the finished cake moist.

The step that matters

Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Adding eggs gradually lets each one emulsify fully into the creamed butter and sugar. Adding them too fast can cause the batter to curdle and trap less air, leading to a coarser, denser crumb.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, raisin, orange, lemon. 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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