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Dessert

Election Cake

A yeast-raised cake with raisins, citron, cinnamon, mace, and whipped egg whites, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Election Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Stir butter, lard, milk, yeast, and flour in a large bowl until a thick batter forms.

  2. Let the batter stand until very light.

Add fruit and spices

  1. Add sugar, raisins, citron, spices, and whipped egg whites. Mix well.

  2. Let the mixture rise again.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into buttered pans.

  2. 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the batter's structure, which holds the cake together as it rises and bakes.
Potato yeast
Leavens the batter so it rises and becomes light during standing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing tenderness and flavor to the crumb.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and keeps it moist.
Egg whites
Whipped to trap air, adding lightness to the rising batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps brown the crust during baking.

The step that matters

Let the batter stand until very light. Yeast needs time to produce gas and build airy structure. Underproofed batter bakes dense, while overproofed batter can collapse, so the rise should be checked by its lightness rather than rushed.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, potato, flour, sugar, raisin, cinnamon):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, potato, flour, sugar, raisin, cinnamon. 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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