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Dessert

War Cake

A raisin cake made with brown sugar, lard, and spices, baked in loaf pans.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

War 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. In a pot, combine brown sugar, hot water, lard, raisins, salt, and cinnamon.

  2. Boil the mixture for five minutes after it starts bubbling.

  3. Allow the mixture to cool.

  4. Once cooled, add sifted flour and baking powder.

  5. Dissolve baking soda in hot water and add to the mixture.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into two loaf pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture to the finished cake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the hot, acidic mixture to produce gas that makes the cake rise.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel-like flavor to the cake.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and moistness in the crumb.

The step that matters

Dissolve the baking soda in hot water before adding it. Baking soda must be fully dissolved so it distributes evenly through the batter; clumps leave bitter spots and uneven rising. It reacts with acids in the mixture to release gas, so it should be stirred in promptly rather than left to sit.

“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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