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Dessert

Walnut Cake

A sweet cake with raisins and walnuts, topped with a sugar‑egg yolk icing.

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 ↓

Walnut 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.

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the butter mixture.

  5. Fold in the beaten egg whites, raisins, and chopped walnuts.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake until golden.

Ice and finish

  1. For the icing, beat the egg yolks with white sugar until stiff.

  2. Spread the icing on the hot cake and sprinkle with walnuts.

  3. Return the cake to the oven until the icing is set.

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

Egg whites
Beaten whites trap air, giving the cake lift and a light, airy crumb.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become tender.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while creaming adds air to the batter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and moisture, and set into the icing when beaten with sugar.

The step that matters

Returning the iced cake to the oven. The icing made from raw egg yolks and sugar must be heated just enough to set without curdling or overbaking. Too much heat can make it weep or turn grainy, while too little leaves it runny.

Swap the walnut

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

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

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