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Caeolina Cake, with Sabayon Sauce

A sweet potato cake with raisins, rum, and a Sabayon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Sweet potato and corn match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 153 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Caeolina Cake, with Sabayon Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the base

  1. Prepare the sweet potatoes and pound them through a fine colander.

  2. Mix the milk and corn starch in a saucepan and heat until thickened.

  3. Combine the thickened mixture with the sweet potatoes and let it cool.

  4. Stir in the citron, raisins, currants, and rum.

  5. Slowly add the raw eggs and egg yolks, sweetening to taste.

Bake the cake

  1. Grease small pudding molds and flour the pudding molds.

  2. Fill the molds with the mixture.

  3. Place the molds in a pan with an inch of water.

  4. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  5. Butter and flour a square pan.

  6. Pour the mixture into the square pan.

  7. Bake in a 350°F (175°C) oven.

  8. Once cooled, cut the cake into pieces.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the pieces in beaten eggs.

  2. Roll the pieces in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry the pieces in hot lard until golden brown.

  4. Serve with Sabayon sauce.

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. Sweet potato + corntop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together153 recipes

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

  2. Sweet potato + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  5. Milk + rumtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together967 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet potatoes
Form the bulk of the cake and give it a soft, moist body.
Milk
Forms a thickened custard base with the corn starch that holds the mixture together.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk so the mixture sets firmly when cooled and baked.
Raw eggs
Bind the mixture and help it set during baking.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help the cake set with a smooth, tender texture.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk and corn starch. Corn starch must be heated fully with the milk so its granules swell and gelatinize; undercooked starch leaves the base thin and grainy, so the cake will not hold its shape.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sweet potato, milk, corn, raisin, rum, egg, sugar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sweet potato, milk, corn, raisin, rum, egg, sugar. 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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