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Dessert

Plum Cake

A spiced molasses cake with raisins, currants, and citron, leavened with saleratus and finished with brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure. The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the batter

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, combine the batter, molasses, sweet milk, and well-beaten eggs.

  3. Dissolve the saleratus in a little hot water and add it to the mixture.

  4. Stir in the ground mace or nutmeg, ground cinnamon, and brandy.

  5. Add flour gradually until the batter is thick but can be stirred easily with a spoon.

  6. Beat the mixture well until light.

Add fruit and bake

  1. Fold in the raisins, currants, and citron.

  2. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for about 1 hour or until a toothpick comes out clean.

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. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Saleratus
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, dark color, and moisture to the cake.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the flour gradually. Too much flour makes the batter stiff and dense, while too little leaves the cake weak and gummy. Adding it slowly lets you stop when the batter is thick yet still stirs easily, which gives a tender, even crumb.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, milk, egg, cinnamon, brandy, flour, raisin):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Clovefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, milk, egg, cinnamon, brandy, flour, 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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