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Dessert

Nut Cake, Ok White Fkuit Cake

A baked cake made with butter, sugar, sweet milk, flour, baking powder, eggs, corn starch, raisins, walnuts, citron, and almond extract.

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 ↓

Nut Cake, Ok White Fkuit Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the flour mixture to the butter mixture.

Make the batter

  1. Fold in the beaten egg whites, then the yolks.

  2. Mix in the corn starch or additional flour.

  3. Toss the raisins and walnuts in a little flour to prevent sinking, then fold them into the batter.

  4. Add the citron and almond extract.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a deep tin and bake for 1 hour.

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. Corn + walnuttop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together349 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  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 sugar to trap air, giving a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air for lightness.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as the batter sets in the oven.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness; beaten whites lighten the batter when folded in.
Walnuts
Add texture and a toasty, nutty flavor to the crumb.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites and tossing the raisins and walnuts in flour. Folding keeps the whites' trapped air in the batter so the cake rises lightly. Flouring the fruit and nuts helps them stay suspended instead of sinking to the bottom during baking.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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