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Dessert

Frosted Raisin Cake

A cake made with flour, sugar, eggs, raisins, and frosted with a boiled egg white and sugar glaze.

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

Frosted Raisin 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs and cold water, mixing well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then fold into the mixture.

  5. Divide the batter into layers and bake until golden.

Make the frosting

  1. For the frosting, beat the egg white until stiff.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the egg white, ⅔ cup sugar, and water.

  3. Place the saucepan in boiling water and cook for 10-15 minutes, stirring gently.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the chopped raisins.

Assemble

  1. Spread the frosting between the layers and on top of the cake.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once it sets during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness to the crumb and carries flavour.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises and becomes light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay tender.
Egg white
Beaten until stiff, it forms the airy, marshmallow-like base of the frosting.

The step that matters

Cook the frosting over boiling water while stirring gently. Heating the beaten egg white and sugar gently cooks the egg white proteins so the frosting sets glossy and stable. Stirring gently keeps the foam from collapsing and prevents the mixture from becoming grainy or overcooked.

“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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