Why it works: Persimmon and walnut share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 24 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. 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
Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Make the batter
In a bowl, mix the persimmon pulp, sugar, and egg until well combined.
Add the flour, baking powder, and baking soda, and mix until smooth.
Grease a baking dish with the walnut-sized butter.
Bake
Pour the batter into the dish and bake for 40 minutes.
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 + walnuttop 4% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together24 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).
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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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Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together5,873 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).
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, natural sweetness and fruity flavour to the cake.
- Egg
- Binds the batter and helps give the cake structure as it sets.
- Flour
- Forms the main structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and turn light.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with acidic ingredients to produce gas, aiding rise and browning.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the cake brown and keep its moisture.
The step that matters
Mix the batter until smooth. Mixing the flour in only until smooth avoids overdeveloping gluten, which would make the cake tough and dense. Leaveners need to be well distributed so the cake rises evenly in the oven.
Swap the persimmon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, flour, butter, walnut):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits about as well
- Persimmonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, butter, walnut. 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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