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Dessert

Election Cake

A yeast‑leavened cake with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, spices, raisins, and a sweet glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Election Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Beat the butter and sugar until creamy.

  2. Divide the mixture in half and rub one half into the flour.

  3. Mix the flour with the milk and add the yeast.

  4. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise.

  5. Once risen, add the remaining butter, sugar, eggs, and spices.

  6. Let the mixture rise again.

Shape and bake

  1. Mix the baking soda with ½ cup of dry flour and sift it into the dough.

  2. Beat the mixture until smooth and creamy.

  3. Stir in the stoned raisins.

  4. Place the batter in baking pans.

  5. Let the batter rise again before baking.

  6. Bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for at least one hour, avoiding dark browning.

  7. Let the cakes cool in the pans for 30 minutes before turning them out.

  8. Frost the top and sides of the loaves while warm.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep the crumb moist and tender.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture to the dough.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rises, leavening the dough.
Milk
Provides moisture and hydrates the flour to form the dough.

The step that matters

Bake slowly and avoid dark browning. Sugar and proteins brown quickly at high heat, so a slow bake at a moderate temperature lets the centre set through before the crust darkens too much.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Blueberryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, egg, milk, nutmeg, 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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