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Dessert

Pound Plum Cake

A dense cake made with butter, powdered sugar, egg yolks, brandy-soaked raisins, currants, citron, and citrus peel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Pound Plum Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Soak the raisins, currants, and peels in brandy the day before.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter until smooth.

  2. Gradually add the powdered sugar and mix well.

  3. Incorporate the egg yolks one at a time.

  4. Add the soaked fruit and lemon peel to the creamed mixture.

  5. Gradually mix in the flour until combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

  2. Bake slowly until a toothpick inserted comes 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. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Brandy + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,768 recipes

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

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 build a smooth, tender crumb structure.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and help bind the batter together.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the batter and dissolves smoothly into the creamed butter.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and sweetness after soaking in brandy.

The step that matters

Bake slowly until a toothpick inserted comes out clean. A dense, fruit-heavy batter needs low, gentle heat so the centre cooks through before the outside over-browns or dries. Testing with a toothpick confirms it is fully set.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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