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Dessert

Jelly Cake

A sweet cake with layers of jelly and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Jelly 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.

Make the batter

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

  2. Add the sweet milk and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring for ten minutes.

  5. Divide the batter into three greased cake tins, putting 4 spoonfuls in each.

  6. To the remaining batter, add the molasses, chopped raisins, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg, and flour.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake all layers at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

  2. Once baked, layer the cakes with your choice of jelly while they are still warm.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 trap air, giving the cake a tender, fine crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, aerated batter when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that reacts with baking soda to help the cakes rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the batter.

The step that matters

Stirring the dry ingredients into the wet mixture. Stirring for a long time develops gluten in the flour, which can make the cake tough. Mix only until the dry ingredients are just combined, while the leavening reacts to lift the batter.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

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