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Dessert

Plum Cake

A dense, spiced fruit cake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, raisins, currants, almonds, citrus peel, spices, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the spices.

  3. Mix in the flour alternately with the well-beaten eggs.

  4. Add the prepared fruit. Beat well.

  5. Add the baking powder.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) for 3 to 4 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Almond + orangetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,125 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps trap air when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure, moisture and richness.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and lightens.
Raisins
Add sweetness, chew and moisture to the cake.

The step that matters

Bake low and slow. A long, moderate bake lets the heat reach the dense center without the outside burning. Because the batter is heavy with fruit and nuts, underbaking leaves it gummy inside, while a hot oven would scorch the exterior before the middle sets.

Swap the currant

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

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

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