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Dessert

Plum Cake

A baked cake made with sugar, butter, flour, raisins, egg, sour milk, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and lemon extract.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,189 recipes. Both carry ethyl cinnamate, which smells sweet, balsamic. The science ↓

Plum Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg and mix well.

  4. Stir in the sour milk.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

Make the cake

  1. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until just combined.

  2. Fold in the raisins.

  3. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for about 45-50 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Cinnamon + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as the batter bakes.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor in the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, browned crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and moisture.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda, helping the cake rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Mixing the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Mixing until just combined keeps the batter tender. Overmixing develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough and dense.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovethe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

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