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Dessert

Walnut Cake

A moist cake made with brown sugar, butter, sour milk, egg yolks, flour, raisins, walnuts, cloves, cinnamon, and baking soda.

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 ↓

Walnut 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream together the brown sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sour milk and egg yolks, mixing well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, cloves, and cinnamon.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until just combined.

  5. Fold in the raisins and walnuts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a toothpick 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Raisin + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,070 recipes

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

  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

Flour
Provides the starch and gluten network that gives the cake its structure.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cake brown and stay tender.
Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air and add richness and tender texture.
Egg yolks
Add richness, fat and emulsifying power that help bind the batter.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour milk's acidity to produce gas that lifts the cake.
Sour milk
Its acidity activates the baking soda and adds moisture and tang.

The step that matters

Stirring in the dry ingredients. Once flour meets liquid, gluten begins to form; stirring only until combined keeps the crumb tender rather than tough and dense.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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

More walnut cake recipes

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