Skip to main content
Dessert

To Make a Rich Plum Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, currants, sweetmeats, almonds, eggs, allspice, cinnamon, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Make a Rich Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter until creamy, then mix in the sugar until light.

  2. Add the allspice and cinnamon, stirring well.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolks, two or three at a time.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff and fold them in gradually.

  5. Add the orange peel, lemon, citron, currants, and sweet almonds, mixing well.

  6. Sift in the flour and add the brandy, mixing until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a tin hoop and bake in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for three hours, placing twelve sheets of paper underneath to prevent burning.

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 + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  4. Almond + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a rich, tender crumb.
Eggs
Yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whipped whites lighten it with trapped air.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it sets in the oven.
Sugar
Aids aeration when creamed with butter, and adds sweetness and browning.
Currants
Provide concentrated fruit sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and moisture to the batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Fold the stiff egg whites in gradually so the air they hold is not knocked out, keeping the cake light.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, brandy, almond, egg, allspice. 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.

More plum cake recipes

Rich 19Pound 4 See all 152 →

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes