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Dessert

Minnehaha Cake

A layered cake with butter, sugar, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and a raisin-walnut filling made from boiled sugar syrup and egg white.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter with the granulated sugar.

  2. Add the eggs and milk, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add the sifted flour and baking powder.

  4. Divide the batter into two layers.

  5. Bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil the sugar and water until it 'hairs' from the spoon.

  2. Beat the syrup into the whipped egg white until cool.

  3. Fold in the raisins and chopped walnuts.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the cake layers.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + walnuttop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, setting as the cake bakes.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and stay light.
Egg white
Whipped into the syrup to make a light, airy, fluffy filling.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the filling.

The step that matters

Beat the syrup into the whipped egg white until cool. The sugar syrup must be hot enough to cook the egg white slightly while beating, and the filling must cool before spreading so it sets thick and stable rather than runny.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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