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Dessert

Scotch Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, butter, lemon, eggs, flour, raisins, and spices, baked at 350°F.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Scotch 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 ↓

Scotch 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 together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  2. Add the grated lemon rind and juice.

  3. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately until frothy.

  4. Stir the eggs into the mixture, then add the sifted flour.

  5. Mix for 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Line cake pans with buttered paper.

  2. Fold in the raisins and spices just before pouring into the pans.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 1 hour.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Lemon + raisintop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,742 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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
Whipped separately and folded in, they lighten the batter and give the cake its rise and structure.
Butter
Creamed with the sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with the butter, it adds sweetness and helps create a fine, even crumb.
Sifted flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Seeded raisins
Add chewy pockets of sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites and yolks separately until frothy. Whipping the whites and yolks separately and folding them in keeps air in the batter. If the eggs are overmixed or deflated, the cake bakes up dense instead of light.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

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