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Dessert

Minnehaha Cake

A layered cake with a sugar‑egg white filling and raisins or hickory nuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Minnehaha 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 cake

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter, then add the egg whites and whole eggs, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the milk, baking soda, flour, and cream of tartar until smooth.

  4. Divide the batter into three layers and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil sugar in enough water to dissolve it until brittle when dropped in cold water.

  2. Remove from heat and quickly stir into the well-beaten egg white.

  3. Add the chopped raisins or hickory nuts to the mixture.

Assemble

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Egg whites and whole eggs add structure and lift as they set in the baked batter.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, golden crust when baked.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets the cake as the batter bakes.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that helps the layers rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that stabilizes the egg whites and works with baking soda to aid rising.

The step that matters

Cooking the filling syrup to the brittle stage. Sugar syrup must reach the brittle stage to set firm when cooled. Under-cooked syrup stays runny and soaks into the filling, while overcooked syrup turns bitter. Stir it in quickly so it does not seize or harden in the bowl before it is evenly mixed with the egg white.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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