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Dessert

Imperial Black Cake

A dense cake made with flour, almonds, sugar, eggs, butter, nutmeg, raisins, currants, rose water, brandy, and citron.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Imperial Black Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Stir in the beaten eggs, then add the flour and grated nutmeg.

  3. Fold in the fruits and almonds dusted with flour.

  4. Add the rose water and brandy, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake at 300°F (150°C) for about 4 hours.

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. Almond + raisintop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air and adds richness and tenderness.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for a light texture and adds sweetness and browning.
Almonds
Add body, fat and nutty flavour to the crumb.
Raisins
Add moisture and concentrated sweetness to the fruit-filled cake.

The step that matters

Folding in the fruits and almonds. Dusting them with flour helps keep them suspended in the batter rather than sinking to the bottom. Folding gently keeps the batter's trapped air, so the cake stays light during its long bake.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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