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Dessert

Watermelon Cake

A layered cake with white and pink batters, raisins, and optional rose water.

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 ↓

Watermelon Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batters

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

  2. Add the sour milk and baking soda.

  3. Gradually mix in the flour and beaten egg whites until fully combined.

  4. In a separate bowl, mix the pink sugar, sour milk, baking soda, and flour.

  5. Flavor with rose water if desired.

Assemble and bake

  1. Toss the raisins in a little flour to prevent sinking.

  2. Fold the raisins into the pink batter.

  3. Grease the bottom and sides of a cake pan with the white batter.

  4. Fill the pan with the pink batter.

  5. Reserve some white batter to cover the top.

  6. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

  7. Ensure it is well done before removing from the pan.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

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

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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
Beaten whites add lift and a light, airy crumb to the white batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender texture.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with baking soda to help the cake rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness throughout the pink batter.

The step that matters

Toss the raisins in flour before folding. Flour coats the raisins so they are less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter during baking.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Lemonfits less well

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