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Dessert

Nut Cake

A layered cake made with butter, milk, sugar, flour, baking powder, almond extract, eggs, raisins, and walnuts, finished with boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson." · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Nut Cake

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 ↓

Nut Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the cake

  1. Separate the whites from eight eggs and set aside.

  2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add milk, flour, and baking powder to the butter mixture and mix until combined.

  4. Beat the egg whites very lightly and fold them into the batter.

  5. Pour the batter into jelly pans and bake until two of the three layers are set.

Make the icing

  1. Make a boiled icing by combining three cups of sugar and one gill of water; boil until it hardens in water.

  2. Beat two egg whites very lightly and pour the hot syrup over them, beating continuously.

  3. Season the icing with a teaspoonful of vanilla extract.

  4. Add one cup of stoned raisins and one cup of English walnuts to the icing. Break the nuts into about four pieces before adding them.

Assemble

  1. Spread the icing between the cake layers and on top of the cake.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

902Calories
28 gProtein
27 gFat
136 gCarbs

Counts 7 of 8 ingredients. The other 1 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 7 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Grape1/2 cup (76g)62
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Almond1 almond (1.2g)7
Waternot in our table0

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Gibson, Marietta Fauntleroy Hollyday, "Mrs. C. H. Gibson.". 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. See the original page.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  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
Creams with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift and structure to the batter; they set as the cake bakes.
Flour
Forms the cake's main structure once mixed with liquid and heated.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy texture when creamed.

The step that matters

Pouring the hot syrup over the egg whites. The syrup must be boiled to the hard-ball stage so the icing sets firm. Pouring it in while beating continuously cooks the whites gently and keeps the icing smooth rather than lumpy.

“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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