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Dessert

Variety Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, flour, milk, eggs, raisins, molasses, spices, baking soda, and cream of tartar.

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

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 ↓

Variety 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, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the flour, milk, and egg yolks, mixing until smooth.

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

  5. Fold the egg whites into the batter gently.

  6. Stir in the baking soda and cream of tartar.

  7. Take a little more than one-third of the batter and mix in the raisins, spices, and molasses.

Assemble and finish

  1. Pour the remaining batter into two greased cake pans.

  2. Add the dark batter to the center layer between the two light layers.

  3. Frost with jelly or soft frosting as desired.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Sugar + molassestop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake's crumb together.
Eggs
Whipped whites add lift and airiness, while yolks add richness and structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds tenderness and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it sweetens the cake and helps give a tender texture.
Baking soda
Reacts with acid in the batter to release gas, helping the cake rise.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, moisture, and dark color to the spiced batter layer.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites gently. Whipped egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Stirring vigorously knocks that air out, leaving a denser cake, so fold with a light, scooping motion until just combined.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Figfits less well
  4. Strawberryfits less well

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

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