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Autumn Cake

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Autumn Cake

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix butter and sugar together.

  2. Add cold water and half of the flour; beat for a few minutes.

  3. Sift in the remaining flour with baking powder.

  4. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites, a little at a time.

  5. Add the strawberry flavoring.

  6. For icing, mix loaf sugar and beaten egg whites until stiff.

  7. Spread icing on layers and add currant jelly.

  8. Mix plain icing with chocolate and spread over the currant jelly.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + chocolatetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Strawberry + curranttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together195 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Butter + strawberrytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raspberryfits better
  3. Bananafits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, strawberry, chocolate. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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