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Dessert

Election Cake

A fruit cake made with sugar, butter, sour cream, eggs, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Election 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

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Separate eggs and beat the yolks in a bowl.

  4. Beat whites in a bowl.

Make the batter

  1. Add flour to butter‑sugar mixture and mix thoroughly.

  2. Dissolve baking soda in sour cream.

  3. Add dissolved baking soda and sour cream to mixture.

  4. Dredge fruit in flour to prevent sinking.

  5. Fold fruit into batter.

  6. Gently fold beaten egg whites into batter until just combined.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Flour
Builds the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb by coating flour particles and carrying flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, traps air that lightens the texture.
Eggs
Add moisture and structure, and the whipped whites give extra lift to the batter.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to release gas, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Gently fold beaten egg whites into batter until just combined. Beaten whites trap air that gives the cake its lift. Vigorous stirring deflates that foam and leaves a dense, heavy crumb, so fold only until no streaks remain.

“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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