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Dessert

Steamed Jam Cakes with Taffy Sauce

Steamed jam cakes made with eggs, flour, butter, sugar, baking soda, and raspberry jam, served hot with taffy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and red raspberry share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Steamed Jam Cakes with Taffy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl and mix in the butter and sugar.

  2. Add flour gradually until a batter forms.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and mix it into the batter.

  4. Fold in the raspberry jam.

Steam and serve

  1. Fill timbale molds two-thirds full with the batter.

  2. Steam for 1 hour until cooked through.

  3. Serve hot with taffy sauce.

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 + red raspberrytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together28 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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 as they set during steaming.
Flour
Forms the batter and gives the cakes their body and structure.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that helps the cakes rise.
Red raspberry jam
Adds sweetness, fruit flavor and moisture to the cakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in a little hot water and mix it into the batter.. Baking soda needs to be fully dissolved and evenly mixed so it releases gas throughout the batter; clumps can leave dense spots or bitter patches, and the batter should be steamed soon after mixing so the rising gas is not lost.

Swap the red raspberry

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Red raspberrythe original

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