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Dessert

Prune Cake

A layered cake made with sugar, milk, butter, flour, baking powder, eggs, prunes, raisins, figs, lemon pulp, and sugar‑egg frosting.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Chippewa Falls, Wis. Episcopal church. Ladies aid society. [from old catalog] · 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 ↓

Prune Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Mix one and one-half cupfuls of sugar, one cupful of milk, one-half cupful of butter, three small teaspoonfuls of baking powder, whites of three eggs, and nearly three cupfuls of flour.

  2. Bake the batter in two or three layers.

Make the filling

  1. Steam the prunes so you can remove the pits.

  2. Chop the prunes, raisins, and figs together.

  3. Add the pulp and rind of a lemon to the chopped fruit.

  4. Beat two tablespoonfuls of sugar with the yolks of three eggs.

  5. Warm the mixture in a steamer until it sticks together.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers and frost the top.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

932Calories
28 gProtein
26 gFat
146 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
Fig1 medium (50g)37
Prunenot 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 Chippewa Falls, Wis. Episcopal church. Ladies aid society. [from old catalog]. 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Whites add structure to the batter, and yolks enrich the filling and add moisture.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake layers as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the cake layers.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise.
Prunes
Provide moisture, sweetness and body to the filling.

The step that matters

Warm the fruit mixture in a steamer until it sticks together. Gentle heat softens the chopped fruit and lets its natural pectin and starches bind it into a spreadable filling. Heating too little leaves it loose, while overheating can make it dry or scorch.

Swap the fig

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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