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Dessert

A Small Rich Plum Cake

A rich plum cake made with currants, butter, eggs, sugar, flour, 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

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

  2. Cream the butter with your hand in a copper preserving pan.

Make the batter

  1. Whisk the eggs (yolks and whites) for about 10 minutes in another pan.

  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 cold.

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

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

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

Bake

  1. Prepare a cake pan with parchment paper and pour in the batter.

  2. Bake in a regular heat oven 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 and warmed, they build the aerated structure that holds the cake together.
Butter
Creamed with the mixture, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Flour
Provides the starch and structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps give the eggs a smooth, stable body.
Currants
Add fruity sweetness and chewy pockets throughout the cake.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Whisking the eggs and sugar over low heat. Heating the eggs gently thickens and stabilises the foam, but too much heat will scramble or cook the eggs, ruining the batter's texture.

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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