Skip to main content
Dessert

Buttermilk Cake

A moist cake made with buttermilk, currants, raisins, citron, and spices.

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

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Buttermilk Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and brown sugar together.

  3. Add the buttermilk and mix well.

  4. Dredge the currants and raisins in 1 cup of flour, then fold them into the batter along with the citron.

  5. Dissolve the baking soda in a little milk and add it to the mixture.

  6. Add spices to taste and enough flour to stiffen the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 2 hours.

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 + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Buttermilk + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown as it bakes.
Buttermilk
Adds moisture and acidity that works with the baking soda to lift the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit and sweetness throughout the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of fruit and sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dredging the fruit in flour. Coating the currants and raisins in flour helps keep them suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom of the pan during baking.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, buttermilk, raisin, flour, clove, nutmeg. 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipes