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Dessert

Christmas Cake

A spiced, raisin-filled cake baked at 300°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Christmas Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, chopped raisins, and spices.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the melted butter, cream, treacle, and well-beaten eggs.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in the vinegar and add it to the mixture.

  5. Combine all ingredients and mix well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a buttered mold.

  2. Bake for about 2 hours.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Ginger + raisintop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Molasses + sugartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the vinegar to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Treacle
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness to the cake.
Melted butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in the vinegar and add it to the mixture. Baking soda needs an acid to release gas. Dissolving it fully in the vinegar before mixing spreads the leavening evenly, so the cake rises uniformly instead of in patches.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, cream, molasses, sugar, egg, raisin):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, cream, molasses, sugar, egg, raisin. 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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