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Dessert

Frosted Raisin Cake

A layered cake with raisins, baked and frosted with a sweet egg white glaze.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Frosted Raisin 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. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix sugar, flour, eggs, cold water, baking powder, and butter until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into layers.

  4. Bake the layers until golden.

Make the frosting

  1. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  2. Combine the egg white, sugar, and water in a saucepan.

  3. Cook the mixture over boiling water for 10-15 minutes without letting it stiffen.

  4. Stir the chopped raisins into the frosting.

Assemble the cake

  1. Spread the frosting between the layers and on top of the cake.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

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

Flour and butter 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
Provide structure and richness, helping the batter set as it bakes.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its starch sets during baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown while baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the layers rise and become light.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the cake crumb.
Egg white
Whipped and cooked with sugar to form a stable, glossy frosting.

The step that matters

Cooking the frosting without letting it stiffen. Heating the beaten egg white and sugar over boiling water lets the sugar dissolve and the proteins cook gently into a smooth, spreadable foam. Overheating or over-cooking can make it stiff, grainy, or dry, so it should be watched closely during the 10-15 minutes.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Walnutthe original

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