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Dessert

New England Election Cake

A yeast‑leavened cake with raisins, brandy, and spices, baked after two rises.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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 ↓

New England Election Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Mix the sifted flour with warm milk until it forms a stiff batter.

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Mix half of the creamed mixture with the batter and add the yeast.

  4. Beat the mixture thoroughly.

  5. Let it rise in a warm place for several hours, preferably overnight.

Finish and bake

  1. Once risen, add the remaining butter and sugar, eggs, raisins, brandy, spices, and baking soda.

  2. Allow the mixture to rise again.

  3. Pour it into pans for baking.

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. 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. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Flour
Forms the stiff batter that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, tenderizing the crumb.
Yeast
Leavens the batter so it rises during the long fermentation.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind and set the crumb.
Raisins
Provide sweetness and chewy fruit pieces throughout the cake.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps brown the crust.

The step that matters

Letting the sponge rise in a warm place. Yeast needs warmth and time to ferment the stiff batter; if it is too cold the rise is slow and weak, leaving a dense cake. Overnight rising builds flavour and lift.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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