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Dessert

Seedless Raisin Cake

A moist cake made with butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk, seedless raisins, cinnamon, mace, brandy, and baking powder.

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

Seedless 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. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add beaten egg yolks, cinnamon, mace, and brandy and mix well.

  3. Beat mixture for three minutes.

  4. Gradually add milk, alternating with prepared flour and dredged raisins.

  5. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites gently.

Bake

  1. Pour batter into four small loaf pans or pate pans.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until a toothpick inserted 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. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creaming with sugar traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify the batter; whites beaten stiff lighten and give structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise and become light.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure once its proteins set during baking.
Sugar
Creams with butter for aeration and adds sweetness and browning.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter so it bakes evenly.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiffly beaten egg whites. Stirring them in roughly deflates the foam that gives lift, so the cake turns dense. Fold gently, cutting through and turning the batter, until no white streaks remain.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

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

More raisin cake recipes

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