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Dessert

Prune Cake

A moist cake made with sugar, milk, butter, flour, baking powder, egg whites, egg yolks, prunes, raisins, figs, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Prune 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 sugar and butter. Add the milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture.

  4. In another bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold into the batter.

  5. Divide the batter into two or three layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, steam the prunes to remove the pits, then chop them with the raisins and figs.

  2. Mix in the lemon pulp and rind, and the sugar beaten with the egg yolks.

  3. Warm the filling in a steamer until it sticks together.

Assemble and finish

  1. Spread the filling between the cake layers and frost the top.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + figtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Milk + figtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,026 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).

  5. Fig + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together763 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg whites whipped to stiff peaks add lift and an airy structure to the batter.
Egg yolks
Yolks beaten with sugar add richness and help bind the filling.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the cake crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the layers rise.
Prunes
Chopped fruit gives the filling its moisture, sweetness and body.

The step that matters

Warm the filling in a steamer until it sticks together. Heating the chopped fruit softens it and lets its natural pectin and sugars bind the pieces into a spreadable filling. Under-heating leaves it loose, and overheating can scorch the sugars.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Peachfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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