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Dessert

English Pound Cake

A dense cake made with equal parts butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and dried fruit, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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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 ↓

English Pound Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat the butter and sugar together until creamy.

  3. Mix all prepared fruits together: shred the almonds, cut the cherries in half, and chop the prunes into small pieces.

  4. Beat the eggs until light and fluffy.

Make the cake batter

  1. Alternately mix the flour, eggs, and fruit into the butter and sugar mixture.

  2. Once well combined, add the spice, brandy, browning, and baking soda. Mix thoroughly again, then pour the mixture into a prepared tin.

Bake

  1. Bake in the preheated oven for 4 to 5 hours.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dense fruit and batter together.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust while creaming with butter.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift and lighten the batter during baking.

The step that matters

Beat the butter and sugar until creamy. Creaming works air into the fat and sugar, which gives the batter lift and an even crumb. Under-creaming leaves a dense cake, while the fruit and flour added later need a well-aerated base to rise evenly.

Swap the currant

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

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

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