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Dessert

Raisin Cake

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, brandy, baking soda, milk, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Raisin Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  2. Add the powdered sugar, flour, salt, nutmeg, and egg yolks. Mix well.

  3. Dissolve the baking soda in hot milk. Add the dissolved baking soda to the mixture.

  4. Beat the egg whites until stiff. Fold the stiff egg whites into the batter.

  5. Stone and chop the raisins. Roll the raisins in flour. Stir the floured raisins into the batter.

Bake

  1. Line a small cake tin with buttered paper and fill it three-quarters full with batter.

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Check for doneness by inserting a skewer; it should come out clean.

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. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Whites trapped by beating add lift and an airy crumb, while yolks enrich the batter.
Sweet butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich texture.
All-purpose flour
Flour provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Muscatel raisins
Add chewy pieces of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg whites. Stirring vigorously deflates the whites and loses the air that gives lift. Fold gently with a spatula so the batter stays light and rises evenly in the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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