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Dessert

Edgewood Birthday Cake

A spiced fruit cake made with currants, raisins, citron, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon 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 ↓

Edgewood Birthday Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together, adding a little milk to help mix.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks, spices, and the remaining milk.

  4. Reserve ½ pint of flour to coat the fruits.

  5. Sift the baking soda into the rest of the flour.

Make the batter

  1. Add the flour alternately with the beaten egg whites to the batter.

  2. Stir in the currants, citron, and raisins.

  3. Pour the batter into a large, deep pan lined with parchment paper.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake for 2 to 3 hours until done.

  2. Frost and decorate as desired.

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. Clove + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb while creaming traps air in the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and stay moist.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, richness and lift.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help it rise and lighten.
Raisins
Add chewy texture, sweetness and moisture to the cake.

The step that matters

Add the flour alternately with the egg whites. Adding flour and egg whites in turns keeps the batter smooth and blended. Mixing too hard after the flour goes in can develop too much gluten, making the cake dense and tough.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, raisin, milk, clove, 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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