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Dessert

Motfiee Doechestee’s Black Cake

A dense cake made with raisins, currants, citron, spices, and brandy, baked slowly at low temperature.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove 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 ↓

Motfiee Doechestee’s Black 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. Soak the raisins in brandy overnight, covering tightly.

  2. Brown the flour until dark.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the sugar and butter together in a large bowl.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the soaked raisins, currants, citron, and spices.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into greased tin pans or hoops.

  2. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 2 to 4 hours.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dense batter together as it bakes.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and give the cake a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming with butter adds air.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness, and they plump further after soaking in brandy.
Currants
Add moisture and concentrated fruit flavour throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Browning the flour until dark. Flour browned too little gives pale colour and a flat taste, while overbrowned flour turns bitter. Heating it slowly and watching closely gives deep colour and a toasted, caramel-like flavour.

Swap the currant

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

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

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