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Dessert

Martha Washington Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, sour cream, lemon zest, lemon juice, nutmeg, mace, raisins, currants, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Martha Washington Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks, then the sour cream and flour.

  3. Fold in the beaten egg whites.

  4. Flour the fruit and stir it in last.

Bake

  1. Bake for about 2 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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creaming with butter creates air pockets and adds sweetness and a tender texture.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure, while whites folded in lighten the batter and help it rise.
Flour
Its proteins set during baking to form the cake's main structure.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and a mild acidity that keeps the crumb tender.
Raisins
Add sweetness and chewy texture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the batter, which leads to a denser cake with less rise.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, cream, lemon, nutmeg. 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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