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Dessert

Dolly Varden Cake

A sweet cake with sugar, milk, flour, eggs, soda, cream of tartar, molasses, raisins, currants, spices, baked in pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Dolly Varden Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix two cups of sugar, two-thirds of a cup of butter, one cup of sweet milk, three cups of flour, three eggs, one-half teaspoonful of soda, and one teaspoonful of cream of tartar. Flavor with lemon.

Bake and layer

  1. Bake one-half of this mixture in two pans.

  2. To the remainder, add one tablespoonful of molasses, one cup of chopped raisins, one-half cup of currants, a piece of citron chopped fine, one teaspoonful of cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

  3. Bake in two pans and put in sheets alternately with a little jelly or egg whites beaten to a froth.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

1029Calories
29 gProtein
33 gFat
156 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 11 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
Molasses1 tbsp (20g)58
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Clove1 tsp ground (2g)7
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6

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

By Goff, May Perrin, [from old catalog] ed. 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.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb as it bakes.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to lift the batter as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acts with the soda to produce gas, helping the cake rise.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer crumb.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness to the spiced layer.

The step that matters

Putting the layers together alternately. The spiced, fruited batter is baked separately from the plain batter, so the two layers must be stacked evenly with the filling. Uneven layers bake unevenly and can make slicing and rising inconsistent.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Applefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, flour, cream, molasses, 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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