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Dessert

Raisin Layer Cake

A layered cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, milk, raisins, and a sugar syrup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Raisin Layer 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 butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the egg yolks and milk, mixing well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and cream of tartar, stirring until smooth.

  5. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  6. Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter gently.

  7. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Make the raisin filling

  1. For the filling, combine ⅓ cup sugar and 3 tablespoons water in a saucepan and boil for 5 minutes.

  2. Slowly pour the syrup over the beaten egg whites, then add the chopped raisins.

  3. Beat the mixture until cool and spread it between the layers 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. Sugar + syruptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,842 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Yolks enrich and set the crumb, while beaten whites add lift and an airy structure.
Butter
Fat that creams with sugar to trap air and gives the cake a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, creamed batter and a syrup for the filling.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg whites so they hold their peaks.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the filling.

The step that matters

Fold the beaten egg whites into the batter gently. Folding keeps the air trapped in the whipped whites. Stirring or overmixing deflates the foam, so the cake rises less and bakes up denser.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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