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Dessert

Rich Cream Cake

A cake made with sugar, butter, eggs, brandy, nutmeg, flour, cream, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Rich Cream 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 together the sugar and butter until very white.

  2. Beat the egg whites and yolks separately until frothy.

  3. Add the beaten eggs, brandy, nutmeg, and flour to the creamed mixture.

  4. Just before baking, stir in the cream and raisins.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan and bake at 350°F (175°C) until done.

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

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

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

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

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Provide structure and richness, with beaten whites adding lightness to the batter.
Flour
Forms the cake's structure as its proteins set during baking.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, moist crumb.
White sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender texture when creamed with butter.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the batter.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and fruity bursts throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Creaming the sugar and butter. Beating sugar and butter together traps air in the fat, which gives the cake lift and a light, even crumb. Under-creaming leaves a dense texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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