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Dessert

Hickory-nut Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, raisins, currants, hickory nuts, citron, milk, flour, baking powder, lemon, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Hickory-nut Cake

Why it works: Raisin and flour 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 ↓

Hickory-nut 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.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs gradually, mixing well.

  4. Stir in the raisins, currants, hickory nuts, citron, and sweet milk.

  5. In a separate bowl, combine the flour and baking powder, then add to the mixture.

  6. Flavor with lemon and nutmeg to taste.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a large cake pan.

  2. Bake for about 2 hours or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Raisin + flourtop 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. Raisin + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  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
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and turn light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a fine, tender texture.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the beaten eggs gradually. Adding eggs slowly lets the emulsion of butter and sugar stay stable. Adding them all at once can cause curdling, which may leave the cake dense.

Swap the currant

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

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

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