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Dessert

Egoless, Milkless, Butterless Cake

A cake made without eggs, milk, or butter, using lard, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Egoless, Milkless, Butterless Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Combine brown sugar, lard, Bee Brand Cake Spice, raisins, and water in a saucepan.

  2. Boil for three minutes after boiling starts.

  3. Cool the mixture to lukewarm.

  4. Dissolve baking soda in warm water.

  5. Add the dissolved baking soda to the mixture.

  6. Sift in baking powder and flour.

  7. Beat the mixture well.

Bake

  1. Pour into a well-greased pan or muffin tins.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until done.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

What each ingredient does

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and gives the cake a soft, deep flavor.
Lard
Provides fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and natural sweetness throughout the cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic raisin mixture to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking to lift the batter further.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it sets.

The step that matters

Add the baking soda and powder before beating. Baking soda and baking powder release gas once they meet liquid and heat. Adding them after the batter is cooled and beaten well, and baking promptly, keeps the gas trapped so the cake rises instead of falling flat.

“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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