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Dessert

Bread and Raisin Cake

A yeast‑raised cake made with flour, water, butter, sugar, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bread and Raisin Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix the flour, water, salt, sugar, and softened butter.

  2. Add the grated nutmeg (or cinnamon/allspice) and raisins.

  3. Dissolve the yeast in warm water and stir it into the mixture to form a stiff batter.

  4. Let the batter rise for about 3 hours.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for about 3 hours at 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the cake on the upper shelf of the oven with a pan of warm water underneath.

  3. Keep it in the oven for several hours after baking.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

White flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the batter its structure.
Water
Hydrates the flour and yeast so the batter can form and rise.
Yeast
Produces gas during the rise, which leavens the cake and opens its crumb.
Softened butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast, and helps the crust brown.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture, and chewy pockets throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise for about 3 hours. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas to lighten the batter. A short rise leaves the cake dense and heavy, while the gas bubbles set the crumb during baking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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