Skip to main content
Dessert

Rich Plum Cake

A dense cake made with butter, sugar, flour, currants, brandy, sweetmeats, almonds, eggs, allspice, cinnamon, and citrus peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Rich Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Melt the butter to a cream.

  2. Add the sugar and stir until light.

  3. Mix in the allspice and cinnamon, then stir for 15 minutes.

  4. Add the yolks of the eggs, two or three at a time.

  5. Beat the egg whites to stiff peaks and gradually fold them in.

  6. Add the orange peel, lemon, citron, and currants mixed with sweet almonds.

  7. Fold in the sifted flour and brandy.

Bake

  1. Bake in a tin hoop at 400°F (200°C) for 3 hours, placing 12 sheets of paper underneath and 4-5 on top to prevent burning.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Currant + brandytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Currant + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,359 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl benzoate (fruity, sweet).

  4. Almond + allspicetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together512 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

Butter
Creaming it with sugar gives the cake its rich, tender crumb and fat-based flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, when creamed with butter, traps air that lightens the batter.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whipped whites give lift and structure.
Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that sets the cake's structure as it bakes.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour depth that complements the spices and dried fruit.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. The whites hold the air that lightens the cake. Stirring vigorously or overmixing knocks that air out, leaving a dense cake, so fold gently and only until the whites are evenly blended.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, flour, brandy, almond, egg, allspice. 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.

You might also like

Orange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesLemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesOrange Cream Rice PuddingOrange Cream Rice Pudding121 recipes