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Dessert

Harrison Cake

A spiced cake with raisins, currants, and sliced citron baked in loaf pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Harrison Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Add the brown sugar, molasses, egg yolks, and spices; beat well.

  3. Gradually add the sweet milk.

  4. Add the beaten egg whites.

  5. Alternate with the sifted flour mixed with baking powder.

  6. Fold in the raisins, currants, and sliced citron.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into loaf pans and bake.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb to the cake.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and the beaten whites lighten the batter for a lighter structure.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter to help the cake rise.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture, and a deep caramel flavor to the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Add the beaten egg whites. Whipped egg whites trap air that lightens the batter. Folding them in gently, rather than beating them back down, keeps the cake from turning dense.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, flour, molasses, milk, cinnamon, clove):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, molasses, milk, cinnamon, clove. 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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