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Dessert

Little Plum Cakes

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Little Plum Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the eggs and vanilla extract, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the sifted flour, raisins, currants, and baking soda dissolved in a little water.

  4. Add milk gradually until you achieve a stiff batter.

Bake

  1. Drop the batter by spoonfuls onto well-buttered baking sheets.

  2. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until golden.

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. Vanilla + milktop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

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

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Adds fat and richness, and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with sugar.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and moisture as they set in the oven.
Sifted flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cakes as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help the cakes rise and brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the cakes and contributes to browning and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Add milk gradually until a stiff batter forms. Too much liquid at once makes the batter loose, so the drops spread flat instead of holding a rounded shape while they bake. Adding milk slowly lets you stop once the batter is stiff enough to hold its shape.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Coconutfits better
  3. Peachfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, vanilla, flour, raisin, 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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