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Dessert

Black Cake

A dense fruit cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, currants, raisins, citron, almonds, spices, wine, brandy, yeast, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Black 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 dough

  1. Brown the flour.

  2. Mix the flour with yeast and lukewarm milk.

  3. Let the dough rise overnight.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Beat the egg yolks.

  3. Mix the egg yolks with the creamed butter and sugar.

  4. Add the risen dough.

  5. Work the dough with your hands until smooth.

  6. Incorporate the spices.

  7. Incorporate the beaten egg whites.

  8. Fold in the fruits that have been dusted with flour.

Bake

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 3 ½ hours.

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 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

Eggs
Egg yolks and whites add richness and structure, helping the cake set as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it sets in the oven.
Yeast
Ferments the dough so it rises, giving the cake a lighter texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a tender crumb.
Almonds
Add richness and a nutty flavour that complements the fruit and spices.

The step that matters

Incorporate the beaten egg whites. Beaten whites hold air that lightens the heavy batter. Folding gently preserves that air, while overmixing deflates it and leaves a denser cake.

Swap the currant

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

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

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