Skip to main content
Dessert

Plum Cake

A rich cake of butter, sugar, eggs, flour, raisins, currants and candied peel, leavened with sour milk and Magic Soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Plum Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

Make the batter

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

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

  3. Stir in the flour, sour milk, Magic Soda, molasses, raisins, currants, candied peel, and spices until well combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased cake pan.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven for about 2 hours 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. 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. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Provides the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps give the cake a tender crumb when creamed with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps trap air when creamed with butter, aiding lightness.
Eggs
Add structure, binding, and moisture to the batter as they set during baking.
Magic soda
Reacts with the sour milk to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Sour milk
Adds moisture and acidity, which activates the leavening and tenderizes the crumb.

The step that matters

Bake low and slow until a toothpick comes out clean. A long, low-temperature bake lets the dense, fruit-heavy batter cook through without the outside burning. Testing the centre with a toothpick confirms it is fully set, since an underbaked centre will sink or stay gummy.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Datesfits about as well
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, raisin, egg, milk, molasses. 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 plum cake recipes

Rich 19Pound 4 See all 152 →

You might also like

Molasses CookiesMolasses Cookies96 recipesMolasses CakeMolasses Cake90 recipesRed Currant JellyRed Currant Jelly65 recipesCurrant Ice CreamCurrant Ice Cream32 recipes