Skip to main content
Dessert

Prince Albert Cake

A layered cake with plain and spiced batter, finished with icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Prince Albert 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 the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter, then add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the milk and flour, then add the baking powder.

  4. Divide the batter in half; to one half, add molasses, raisins, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg.

Bake and assemble

  1. Pour the plain batter into shallow tins and bake until golden.

  2. Pour the spiced batter into another tin and bake until done.

  3. Once cooled, layer the cakes and frost with icing flavored to your taste.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness through the creamed base.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake crumb.
Baking powder
Releases gas to lift the batter as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color and a deep sweetness to the spiced layer.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of fruit and sweetness to the spiced layer.

The step that matters

Dividing the batter and baking the two layers. Baking the plain and spiced batters separately means each needs its own tin and time. Pulling a layer when it is golden but not fully set can leave it gummy in the middle, while overbaking dries it out.

“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.

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesCinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesClove CakeClove Cake53 recipes