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Dessert

English Pound-cake

A dense pound cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, almonds, candied peel, brandy, currants, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

English Pound-cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

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

  2. Beat the butter until creamy.

  3. Gradually add the sugar and mix well.

Make the batter

  1. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff and the yolks until thick.

  2. Fold the egg yolks into the butter mixture, then add the egg whites gently.

  3. Stir in the flour, almonds, candied peel, and brandy until combined.

  4. Fold in the currants and raisins.

  5. Pour the batter into a prepared cake pan.

Bake

  1. Bake for at least 3 hours in the preheated oven.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Brandy + curranttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creates a rich, tender crumb and adds fat for flavour when beaten until creamy.
Eggs
Provide structure and lift; whipped whites and yolks help the cake set around the fruit.
All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the cake once heated and set.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps tenderise the crumb when creamed with butter.
English currants
Add sweetness and moist pockets of fruit throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Folding the whipped egg whites into the batter. Whipped whites hold air that gives the cake lift. Folding gently keeps that air in; vigorous stirring deflates the batter and yields a dense cake.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Apricotfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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