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Dessert

Cold Water Cake

A raisin cake baked with cold water, butter, sugar, flour, cloves, baking soda, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Cold Water 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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  2. Add the ground cloves and baking soda to the flour.

  3. Mix the flour mixture into the butter and sugar.

  4. Beat the egg yolks in a separate bowl.

  5. Add the beaten yolks to the mixture.

  6. Stir in the cold water until well combined.

  7. Beat the egg whites in another bowl until light and fluffy.

  8. Gently fold the beaten whites into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for 1½ hours.

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. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, and the whipped whites lighten the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich flavour.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to help it rise and brown.

The step that matters

Gently fold the beaten whites into the batter. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring them vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser cake.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Clovethe original

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