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Dessert

Raised Dough Cake

A cake made from raised dough, sugar, butter, milk, flour, raisins, egg, and spices, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Raised Dough 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 ↓

Raised Dough 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 the batter

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

  2. In a mixing bowl, combine the raised dough, sugar, and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the milk, flour, raisins, egg, cream of tartar, and baking soda. Mix well.

  4. Spice the mixture to your taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan.

  2. Bake for about 30-40 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.

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

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Raised dough
Provides leavening and a yeasted, tender crumb that gives the cake its structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the crumb.
Egg
Binds the batter and helps set the structure as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the batter so baking soda can react and help the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins and starches set in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Baking soda and cream of tartar release gas quickly, so the batter should go into the oven promptly once mixed. Underbaking leaves a wet, sunken center, while overbaking dries the crumb, so checking for doneness matters.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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