Skip to main content
Dessert

Election Cake, No. 3. Mrs. Lewis Weld

A yeast-raised cake with raisins, spices, and brandy, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Election Cake, No. 3. Mrs. Lewis Weld

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 dough

  1. In a large bowl, rub together the butter and flour.

  2. Wet the mixture with 1 quart of lukewarm milk and add the yeast.

  3. Beat well, cover with a cloth, and set in a warm place to rise.

  4. When the mixture is very light, add the sugar, spices, and eggs.

  5. Set the bowl in a moderately warm place to rise again.

Add the fruit and bake

  1. The next morning, add the raisins, wine, lemon peel, and rose extract.

  2. Prepare baking pans by lining them with buttered paper.

  3. Let the batter stand for 1 hour before filling the pans.

  4. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour or more.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake once it is set by baking.
Unsalted butter
Adds richness and tenderness by coating the flour and carrying flavour.
Yeast
Produces gas during rising so the dough becomes light and airy.
Eggs
Add richness, structure and colour to the batter as it bakes.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown during baking.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness and moist, chewy pockets of fruit.

The step that matters

Rising the mixture until very light. Yeast needs time and warmth to produce enough gas for a light crumb. Adding the sugar, spices and eggs before the dough is very light can weigh it down and leave a dense cake.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Allspicefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

You might also like

Lemon CakeLemon Cake228 recipesLemon IceLemon Ice147 recipesLemon SherbetLemon Sherbet103 recipesBrandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipes