Skip to main content
Dessert

Walnut Cake

A sweet cake made with sugar, flour, butter, milk, brandy, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, walnuts, and raisins.

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

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Walnut 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream together the butter and sugar.

Mix the batter

  1. Add the egg yolks, sweet milk, and two‑thirds of the flour.

  2. Fold in the egg whites, then add the remaining flour.

  3. Stir in the walnut meats, raisins, and brandy last.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 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

Eggs
Yolks add richness and emulsify, while whites trap air that lifts the cake.
Flour
Forms the structure that holds the cake together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the crumb tender and rich.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the creamed butter hold air.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the batter to produce gas that leavens the cake.
Cream of tartar
Acid that works with the baking soda to help the cake rise evenly.

The step that matters

Folding in the egg whites. Egg whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently keeps that air in, while stirring hard would deflate the batter and produce a denser cake.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, flour, butter, milk, brandy, egg, cream. 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 walnut cake recipes

Chocolate 9Date 7Filling 7English 6Raisin 4Sour Cream 3 See all 162 →

You might also like

Brandy PeachesBrandy Peaches68 recipesBrandy CreamBrandy Cream21 recipesBrandy PuddingBrandy Pudding13 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipes