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Dessert

Frosted Raisin Cake

A cake of sugar, flour, eggs, butter, and raisins, frosted with a sugar and egg white glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Frosted Raisin 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 and mix

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

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, eggs, cold water, baking powder, and butter until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into layers.

Bake and make the frosting

  1. Bake until golden.

  2. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  3. Combine ⅔ cup sugar and 1 tablespoon water in a saucepan.

  4. Cook over boiling water for 10‑15 minutes without letting it get stiff.

  5. Stir in the chopped raisins into the frosting.

Assemble

  1. Spread the frosting between the layers and on top of the cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness to the batter as they set during baking.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake crumb as its proteins set with heat.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavour in the crumb.
Egg white
Whipped to stiffness to give the frosting its light, airy texture.

The step that matters

Cooking the frosting without letting it get stiff. Sugar syrup boiled too long becomes thick and hard as water evaporates and sugar concentrates, so the frosting can set too firmly to spread. Watching the time keeps it soft and spreadable.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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