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Dessert

Raised Cake

A raised cake made with peanut oil, peanut milk, raisins, and yeast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Raised Cake

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 ↓

Raised Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the peanut oil and sugar together.

  2. Add the warm water and peanut milk, then enough flour to make a stiff dough.

  3. Stir in the liquid yeast and set aside overnight to rise.

Add flavorings and bake

  1. In the morning, add the washed and floured raisins, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. Pour the mixture into oiled baking tins and let rise.

  3. Bake for 45 minutes at 350°F (175°C).

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Caraway + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

  4. Flour + carawaytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the stiff dough together.
Liquid yeast
Produces gas during the overnight rise, leavening the cake and giving it an airy crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and feeds the yeast, helping fermentation along.
Peanut oil
Adds fat, which tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and moisture to the cake.

The step that matters

Letting the dough rise overnight. Yeast needs time and warmth to ferment the dough fully. A rise that is too short leaves the cake dense, while over-proofing can cause it to collapse during baking.

Swap the peanut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, peanut oil, milk, flour, raisin, caraway, nutmeg):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Walnutfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, peanut oil, milk, flour, raisin, caraway, nutmeg. 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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