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Dessert

Minnehaha' Cake

A layered raisin cake with a 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 ↓

Minnehaha' 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 cake

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

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

  3. Add the egg whites and mix until well combined.

  4. In another bowl, combine the cream of tartar, flour, and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, alternating with the sweet milk.

  6. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil the teacup of sugar with a little water until it reaches a brittle stage in cold water.

  2. Remove from heat and quickly stir into the well-beaten egg white.

  3. Fold in the chopped raisins and spread 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. 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Egg whites
Whipped into the filling and batter to add structure and lightness.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg whites and adds a slight acidity to the batter.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic components to help the cake rise and brown.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderize the crumb when creamed with butter.

The step that matters

Adding the hot sugar syrup to the egg whites. The syrup must be at the brittle stage and poured in a thin stream while beating, otherwise it can cook the whites unevenly or deflate them, so the filling stays light and glossy.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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