Skip to main content
Dessert

Pecan Cake

A steamed cake with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, raisins, pecans, almonds, whisky, and sweet cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓
Pecan Cake

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 ↓

Pecan Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the sweet cream and mix well.

  3. Combine the baking powder with the flour, reserving some to dredge the fruit.

  4. Chop the almonds and pecans coarsely and add to the mixture.

  5. Fold in the whisky, floured raisins, and beaten eggs.

Steam and dry

  1. Pour the batter into a greased mold and steam for three hours.

  2. Remove the top and place in the oven to dry out.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pecans + almondtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through fat.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once heated.
Baking powder
Releases gas to help the batter rise.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness throughout the cake.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Chestnutfits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Pecansthe original

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

You might also like

Almond Sponge CakeAlmond Sponge Cake26 recipesAlmond CustardAlmond Custard22 recipesAlmond WafersAlmond Wafers22 recipesCoconut Almond CakeCoconut Almond Cake17 recipes