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Dessert

Plum Cake

A dense fruit cake made with dates, raisins, currants, citron, and spices, baked at 300°F for 4 hours.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum 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.

Prepare

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

  2. Flour the fruit before adding it to the mixture.

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten eggs, mace, cloves, cinnamon, allspice, and grated nutmeg; mix well.

  3. Gradually add the sifted flour and mix until combined.

  4. Fold in the dates, citron, raisins, and currants.

  5. Beat the mixture thoroughly.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into well-buttered tins.

  2. Bake for 4 hours, maintaining a steady heat.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Dates + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together283 recipes

    Shared aroma: anethole (sweet, anise).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavour through the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for lightness.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as it sets during baking.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.
Citron
Adds chewy texture and tart, aromatic citrus flavour.

The step that matters

Maintaining a steady heat during the long bake. A long bake of a dense, fruit-heavy batter needs even, steady oven heat. Sudden temperature swings can set the outside too fast, leaving the centre undercooked or the crust scorched.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, dates, sugar, egg, clove, flour, 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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