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Dessert

Raised Cake

A yeast-raised cake with raisins, currants, citron, and soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Raised Cake

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 ↓

Raised Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, salt, yeast, sugar, and enough flour to make a soft dough.

  2. In the morning, cream the butter and add the remaining sugar, spices to taste, and eggs.

  3. Combine this mixture with the dough, adding more flour until it is as stiff as fruit cake.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. Dissolve the soda in a little boiling water and mix it into the cake batter.

  2. Fold in the floured fruit (raisins, currants, and citron).

  3. Pour the batter into 2 deep cake tins and let it rise in a warm place.

  4. Once light, bake in a moderate oven (350°F/175°C) for about 1 hour or 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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

  3. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Yeast
Causes the dough to rise and gives it a light, airy crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture in the batter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the batter as it bakes.
Soda
Reacts to lighten the batter and help it rise in the tins.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chewy texture and moisture to the finished cake.

The step that matters

Adding flour to the dough. Flour must be added until the dough is stiff but not dry. Too little makes the cake heavy and too much makes it dense and dry, because flour proteins and starch set the crumb as the dough is worked and baked.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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