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Dessert

Fruit Layer Cake

A layered cake with raisins and sherry wine, filled and topped with sliced fruit, coconut, chocolate, or walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 19 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 ↓

Fruit Layer Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add 1½ cups of flour, sherry wine, raisins, and 2 eggs, mixing well.

  4. Stir in 1½ teaspoons of baking powder.

  5. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the second layer and frosting

  1. For the second layer, mix 1 scant cup of flour, 3 eggs, melted butter, milk, 2 teaspoons of baking powder, and vanilla.

  2. Bake in two layers.

  3. For the frosting, beat the whites of 2 eggs and gradually add powdered sugar until thick.

  4. Prepare boiled icing flavored with vanilla.

Assemble

  1. Layer strawberries, sliced oranges, coconut, bananas, grated chocolate, or walnuts between the cake layers and on top of the icing.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar to give the batter tenderness and a rich flavor.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the structure as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and stay light.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and helps the layers brown.
Raisins
Add chewy moisture and concentrated sweetness to the batter.

The step that matters

Baking the layers until golden. Under-baked layers stay wet and collapse, while over-baking dries the crumb. Baking powder needs prompt, steady heat to lift the batter, so check the layers near the end of the time given and do not open the oven early.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Applefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, sherry, wine, egg, milk. 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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