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Dessert

German Pound-cake

A dense cake made with flour, butter, powdered sugar, candied peel, raisins, lemon zest, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

German Pound-cake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sift 10 ounces of flour into a bowl.

  2. In a separate bowl, cream 8 ounces of fresh butter with your hand.

  3. Line a cake tin with buttered parchment paper, placing 3 rounds of buttered paper at the bottom.

Make the batter

  1. Add 2 teaspoons of the sifted flour, 2 teaspoons of powdered sugar, and 1 egg to the butter, mixing well.

  2. Gradually mix in the remaining flour, sugar, and eggs until fully combined.

  3. Grate the zest of 1 lemon into the mixture.

  4. Stir in ¼ pound of sultana raisins and 2 ounces of candied peel.

Bake and cool

  1. Pour the mixture into the tin.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 2 hours.

  3. Turn the cake out of the tin.

  4. Cool it on its side or on a wire rack.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and a tender crumb through creaming and fat.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, moisture and richness.
Sultana raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture scattered through the cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter. Beating butter until light traps air that helps the cake rise and gives a fine texture. Cold or under-beaten butter leaves a dense, heavy crumb. Add eggs gradually so the batter does not split.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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