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Dessert

Black or Plum Cake

A spiced cake made with flour, butter, sugar, raisins, currants, spices, wine, brandy, rose-water, and citron.

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 or Plum Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Pick and clean the currants, wash and drain them, then dry them near the fire or in the sun.

  2. Sprinkle the currants and stoned, halved raisins with sifted flour to prevent sinking.

  3. Mix twice as much cinnamon as mace with the nutmeg.

  4. Combine the wine and rose-water in a tumbler and cut the citron into slips.

  5. Sift the flour into a broad dish and the sugar into a deep pan.

Make the batter

  1. Cut in the butter and stir to a cream, warming if necessary.

  2. Beat the eggs until light and stir them alternately with the flour into the butter and sugar mixture.

  3. Gradually add the spices and liquor, then stir in the raisins and currants.

  4. Stir the entire mixture vigorously for 10 to 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Line a large tin or earthen pan with buttered paper and fill it with layers of the mixture and citron.

  2. Bake for 4 to 5 hours at 300°F (150°C).

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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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
Beaten eggs give the cake structure and lift as they set in the oven.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense fruit and batter together as it bakes.
Powdered white sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps trap air for a lighter crumb.
Currants
Add tartness and moisture to the batter and bake into the cake.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Stir the entire mixture vigorously for 10 to 15 minutes. Long, vigorous stirring develops the flour's gluten and blends the heavy fruit evenly, so the cake holds together and the fruit does not sink to the bottom while baking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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