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Dessert

Minnehaha Cake

A lemon-flavored cake with blanched almonds, raisins, and boiled frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Minnehaha 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the cake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg whites and mix well.

  4. Sift the flour and baking powder together, then add to the mixture alternately with the milk.

  5. Flavor the batter with lemon.

Bake and fill

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 30-35 minutes.

  2. For the filling, chop the blanched almonds and raisins finely.

  3. Mix the chopped almonds and raisins with boiled frosting and flavor with lemon.

  4. Once the cake is cool, spread the filling on top and decorate with halved blanched almonds.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light texture when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become airy.
Egg whites
Add structure and lift to the batter as they set in the oven.
Blanched almonds
Add crunch and nutty flavor to the filling and decoration.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and milk alternately. Adding flour and milk in alternating portions keeps the batter smooth and well emulsified. Adding it all at once can overwork the gluten and produce a dense, tough cake.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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