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 ↓
Twelfth Night 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.
Make the batter
Cream together the butter and sugar.
Beat the egg yolks and add them to the creamed mixture gradually.
Add the milk alternately with the flour mixed with baking powder.
Fold in the beaten egg whites.
Stir in the lemon rind, lemon juice, raisins, and caraway seeds.
Bake and finish
Prepare a round pan with a tube in the center, lined with buttered paper.
Roll silver pieces in thin white paper and flour, then place them in opposite sides of the cake batter.
Bake at 300°F (150°C) until done.
Once cooled, frost with thick white frosting and decorate with candied cherries and angelica, surrounding with holly.
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.
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Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together9,075 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Raisin + brandytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,768 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together12,481 recipes
Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).
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 trapped by folding add lift, and yolks add richness and colour to the batter.
- Butter
- Creaming with sugar traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
- Flour
- Its proteins set during baking to form the cake's structure.
- Baking powder
- Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.
- Seeded raisins
- Add chewy texture and sweetness, softened by soaking in brandy.
The step that matters
Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites; stirring or overmixing deflates them, leaving a denser cake that rises less in the oven.
Swap the lemon
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, raisin, brandy):
- Vanillafits better
- Figfits better
- Apricotfits about as well
- Lemonthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, milk, flour, raisin, brandy. 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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