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Baking

Old Hartford Election Cake

A yeast-raised fruit cake made with butter, sugar, raisins, citron, brandy and wine.

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 ↓

Old Hartford Election Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. Rub the butter and flour together until very fine.

  2. Add half the sugar, then the yeast and half the milk (hot in winter, blood warm in summer).

  3. Add the eggs, then the remaining milk and the wine; beat well.

  4. Let the mixture rise in a warm place overnight.

Finish the batter

  1. In the morning, beat the mixture for a long time, adding the brandy, remaining sugar, and nutmeg.

  2. Allow it to rise again until very light.

  3. Put the batter into cake pans and let it rise for 10 to 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Bake in an oven preheated to 400°F (200°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.

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. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

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

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake's rise and crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps browning in the crust.
Yeast
Produces gas that leavens the batter during each rise.
Eggs
Add structure, richness, and moisture to the batter.
Raisins
Add sweetness and moisture to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Allow it to rise again until very light.. Yeast gas must be trapped in the developed dough to lift the cake. If the batter is underproofed, it bakes dense; the rise is judged by lightness, not just time.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

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