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Dessert

Hash Cake

A sweet cake with a hickory nut and raisin filling, made from a batter of flour, sugar, butter, milk, and egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Hash 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 large bowl, cream together the powdered sugar and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually stir in the flour and baking powder until combined.

  5. Gently fold in the egg whites until just incorporated.

  6. Pour the batter into jelly tins and bake until golden.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine the sugar and a little cold water in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat until the sugar dissolves and the mixture thickens.

  3. Remove from heat and let cool slightly, then beat in the egg whites.

  4. Fold in the chopped hickory nuts and raisins.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of 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. Nuts + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to give the cake a tender, fine crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake batter.
Baking powder
Releases gas that helps the cake rise in the oven.
Egg whites
Add lift and structure to the batter and body to the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and thickens into a syrup when cooked with water.

The step that matters

Cooking the sugar and water for the filling. Sugar syrup can go from thickened to hard or burnt quickly if overheated. Cooling it slightly before beating in the egg whites keeps the whites from scrambling and keeps the filling spreadable.

Swap the nuts

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

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

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