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Dessert

Dolly Varden Cake

A layered cake with white and dark batter, currants, raisins, spices, and lemon filling.

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 ↓

Dolly Varden 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 white layer

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

  2. Beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. Cream together the sugar and butter. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour mixed with baking powder.

  5. Fold in the egg whites.

  6. Pour the batter into jelly tins.

  7. Bake until golden.

Make the dark layer

  1. Mix the egg yolks, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, currants, raisins, cinnamon, and nutmeg for the dark layer.

  2. Pour the batter into separate jelly tins.

  3. Bake until done.

Make the filling

  1. Combine lemon juice, lemon rind, sugar, eggs, and melted butter in a saucepan for the filling.

  2. Cook over low heat until thickened. Stir constantly.

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 + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they give the white layer its light, airy structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and tenderness to both cake layers.
Flour
Forms the main structure of both cake layers once baked.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the layers rise and turn light.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit and sweetness to the dark layer.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of fruit and sweetness to the dark layer.

The step that matters

Cook the filling over low heat until thickened. Eggs thicken as their proteins set with gentle heat. Too much heat or too little stirring can scramble the eggs, leaving lumps instead of a smooth, set filling.

Swap the currant

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

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

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