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Dessert

Ginger Pound Cake, with Fruit

A moist pound cake flavored with ginger, cloves, cinnamon, and molasses, studded with currants and raisins.

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 ↓

Ginger Pound Cake, with Fruit

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

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

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the molasses, currants, raisins, ginger, cloves, cinnamon, baking powder, and milk.

  4. Gradually mix in the flour until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan and bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick 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.

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. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

  3. Raisin + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,242 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  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

Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tender texture.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help set the crumb while adding structure and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a light, fluffy creamed base.
Molasses
Adds moisture, dark color, and a deep, sweet flavor.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes lighter.

The step that matters

Adding the eggs one at a time. Adding eggs gradually and mixing well after each lets them emulsify into the creamed butter and sugar. Dumping them in at once can cause curdling, which may leave a coarser, denser crumb.

Swap the currant

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, molasses, raisin, ginger. 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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