Why it works: Persimmon and flour share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 63 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Persimmon 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.
Prepare the batter
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
In a bowl, mix persimmon pulp, sugar, and egg until well combined.
Add flour, baking powder, and baking soda; mix until smooth.
Melt the butter and stir it into the batter.
Bake
Pour the batter into a greased baking dish.
Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.
Variations
For a soft pudding, omit the egg.
For a custard, omit the flour and baking powder.
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.
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Persimmon + flourtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together63 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Persimmon + sugartop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together75 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Flour and butter 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
- Persimmon pulp
- Provides moisture and natural sweetness, giving the cake its soft, tender body.
- Egg
- Binds the batter and helps set the structure as it bakes.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set in the oven.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic persimmon pulp to produce gas that lifts the batter.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking to help the cake rise and become light.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
The step that matters
Bake for 40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking soda and baking powder start lifting the batter as soon as they are mixed in, so the batter should go into the oven promptly. Pulling the cake too early can leave a wet, sunken centre, while overbaking dries it out.
Swap the persimmon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour, butter):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Persimmonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, butter. 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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