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Dessert

Nut Cake

Nut Cake is a baked dessert made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, raisins, pecans, nutmeg, salt, and whiskey.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Nut 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 ↓

Nut Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the egg yolks one by one, mixing well.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites last.

  4. Flour the nuts and raisins to prevent them from sinking.

  5. Beat the batter for nearly an hour.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared pan and bake for 4 hours at 300°F (150°C).

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Flour and butter 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
Egg yolks and whipped whites add richness and lift to the batter.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air.
Pecan meat
Adds bulk, texture and flavor to the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness distributed throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Flour the nuts and raisins. Coating the nuts and raisins in flour helps them stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during baking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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