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Dessert

Black Cake

A rich fruit cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, currants, raisins, citron, almonds, spices, wine, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Black Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the sponge

  1. Brown the flour.

  2. Mix the browned flour with yeast and lukewarm milk.

  3. Let the mixture rise overnight.

  4. The next morning, mix the flour with fresh milk into a stiff dough using ½ cup of butter and 1 large cup of yeast.

  5. Set the dough to rise overnight.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Mix in the well-beaten egg yolks.

  3. Add the risen dough, working with your hands until smooth.

  4. Add the spices and egg whites.

  5. Fold in the fruits that have been dusted with flour.

Bake

  1. Bake for 3 ½ hours at 300°F (150°C).

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. Almond + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,514 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  4. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the cake with fat, giving a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and structure; whites lighten the batter as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the dough and, once set by baking, gives the cake its structure.
Yeast (in the method)
Ferments the dough overnight so it rises and becomes lighter.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps brown the crust as it bakes.
Currants
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the fruit. Fruit dusted with flour is less likely to sink to the bottom of the batter. Folding gently keeps the egg whites' air in the batter so the cake stays light.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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