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Dessert

Liberty Cake

A moist cake made with flour, shortening, buttermilk, molasses, raisins, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Liberty Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

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

  3. Mix the baking powder and spices into the flour.

  4. Add the flour mixture alternately with the buttermilk and molasses to the creamed mixture.

  5. Dredge the fruit in flour and fold it into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased pan and bake for about 1¼ 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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,721 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Shortening
Creaming with sugar traps air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb.
Buttermilk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to lift the batter and tenderize the crumb.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep sweetness with a hint of bitterness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in buttermilk to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dredge the fruit in flour before folding it in. Flour-coated fruit is less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter, so the fruit stays evenly distributed as the cake sets.

Swap the nuts

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, flour, buttermilk, molasses, milk, raisin, cinnamon):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Nutsthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, buttermilk, molasses, milk, raisin, cinnamon. 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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