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Dessert

Scotch Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, flour, eggs, brandy, lemon, raisins, and frosted with a sugar glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Scotch Cake

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 ↓

Scotch 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Separate the yolks and whites of the eggs.

  4. Beat the yolks and whites separately until frothy.

  5. Mix the beaten yolks with the creamed butter and sugar.

  6. Add the brandy, flour, lemon juice, lemon rind, and raisins to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Frost

  1. For the frosting, boil 1 cup of sugar and 2 tablespoons of water together.

  2. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg white until well mixed.

  3. Frost the cooled cake with the frosting.

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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, and the beaten yolks and whites add lift to the batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it gives the cake tenderness and a rich flavor.
Flour
Forms the main structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the cake moist and tender.
Brandy
Adds aroma and flavor to the batter.

The step that matters

Bake until a toothpick comes out clean. Overbaking dries out the crumb, while underbaking leaves the centre wet and dense. A toothpick test shows when the structure has set.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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