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Dessert

A Small Rich Plum Cake

A rich plum cake made with currants, butter, eggs, sugar, flour, citron, citrus peel, almonds, spices, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

A Small Rich Plum 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

  1. Wash and pick the currants clean, then dry them and toss with a little flour.

  2. In a copper pan, cream the butter with your hand.

Make the batter

  1. In another bowl, whisk the eggs for about 10 minutes.

  2. Add the powdered sugar to the eggs and whisk over low heat, being careful not to burn.

  3. Once warm, remove from heat and whisk until cool.

  4. Mix the egg mixture with the creamed butter by hand.

  5. Add the currants, flour, citron, lemon and orange peel, sweet and bitter almonds, cinnamon, mace, and brandy; mix well.

Bake

  1. Line a cake pan with paper, pour in the batter, and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Lemon + orangetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Orange + almondtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Lemon + almondtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whisked eggs give the batter structure and help it set as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed butter adds richness and a tender crumb to the cake.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the fruit and batter together as the cake sets.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps it become smooth and tender.
Currants
Add fruitiness and moisture; tossing them in flour helps keep them suspended in the batter.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs and sugar over low heat. Gentle heat warms the eggs so the sugar dissolves and the mixture thickens, but too much heat will scramble the eggs and make the batter grainy. Whisking until cool then stabilizes the foam before it is folded into the butter.

Swap the currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, flour, lemon, orange, almond):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, sugar, flour, lemon, orange, almond. 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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