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Dessert

A Small Rich Plum Cake

A rich cake made with currants, almonds, citrus peel, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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.

  2. Toss the currants with a little flour.

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

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the powdered sugar to the eggs and whisk over low heat until warm.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat and whisk until cool.

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

  5. Add the currants, flour, citron, lemon peel, orange peel, sweet almonds, and bitter almonds to the mixture.

  6. Stir in the ground cinnamon, ground mace, and brandy.

Bake

  1. Prepare a cake pan with parchment paper.

  2. Pour the batter into the pan.

  3. 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 to a foam and warmed, they give the cake its light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the batter together as it bakes.
Currants
Add fruitiness and moist pockets of sweetness throughout the cake.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the eggs whisk to a stable foam.
Bitter almonds
Add a deep, nutty aroma that balances the sweetness of the cake.

The step that matters

Warming and cooling the eggs with sugar. Whisking the eggs and sugar over low heat until warm helps them foam and hold air. Cooling them before mixing with the butter keeps the butter from melting and losing the air it trapped, which keeps the crumb light.

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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