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Dessert

Minnehaha Cake

A layered cake with a sweet raisin or hickory nut filling.

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 ↓

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. Cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  3. Add the egg whites (or whole eggs) and mix well.

  4. In a separate bowl, combine cream of tartar, flour, and baking soda.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, alternating with the sweet milk.

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

Make the filling and assemble

  1. For the filling, boil sugar and a little water until it becomes brittle in cold water.

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

  3. Fold in the chopped raisins or hickory nuts.

  4. 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

Butter
Creams with the sugar to add tenderness and a rich, smooth crumb.
Egg whites
Provide structure and lift, setting the crumb as the cake bakes.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the egg whites and works with baking soda to help the cake rise.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake once its proteins set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the batter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps keep it moist and tender.

The step that matters

Adding the hot syrup to the egg white. The sugar syrup must be boiled to the brittle stage and stirred in quickly while hot, so it cooks and stiffens the beaten egg white into a smooth filling instead of leaving it runny or grainy.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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