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Dessert

Raisin Cake

A cake made with egg whites, yolks, sugar, butter, milk, flour, baking powder, and raisins, topped with a custard filling.

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 ↓

Raisin 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 batter

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

  2. In a bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the butter and 1 ½ cups sugar.

  4. Add the egg yolk, milk, flour, and baking powder to the butter mixture and mix well.

  5. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites.

  6. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, combine 1 cup sugar, 3 egg yolks, ½ cup milk, walnut‑sized butter, 2 tablespoons flour, and raisins in a saucepan.

  2. Cook the filling over low heat until thickened like custard.

Assemble

  1. Once the cake is baked, fill it with the custard filling.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together647 recipes

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

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

Egg whites
Beaten to stiff peaks, they trap air and lighten the batter so the cake rises.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake together and thickens the custard filling.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise.
Egg yolks
Enrich the filling and help it thicken into a custard when cooked.

The step that matters

Cook the filling over low heat until thickened like custard. Egg yolks and flour thicken as they heat, but high heat can scramble the eggs and cause lumps or curdling. Gentle, steady heat with stirring gives a smooth custard.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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