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Dessert

Old Hartford Election Cake

A yeasted cake with raisins, citron, spices, and wine, baked at 400°F.

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

Old Hartford Election Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter and flour together until very fine.

  2. Add half the sugar, then the yeast and half the milk (hot in winter, blood-warm in summer).

  3. Add the eggs, then the remainder of the milk and the wine; beat well.

  4. Let the mixture rise in a warm place overnight.

Mix and rise

  1. In the morning, beat the mixture for a long time, adding brandy, sugar, spice, and well-floured fruit.

  2. Allow to rise again until very light.

  3. Put the batter in cake pans and let it rise for 10 to 15 minutes.

Bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake.

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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,427 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

Flour
Forms the structure of the batter, supporting the rise and the crumb.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich, soft crumb.
Yeast
Leavens the batter through fermentation, producing the light, airy rise.
Eggs
Add structure, richness and moisture, helping the cake set when baked.
Raisins
Add sweetness, moisture and chewy texture throughout the cake.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and feeds the yeast while it rises.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture after the overnight rise. Beating for a long time develops gluten and distributes the fruit and liquids evenly. Adding the fruit well floured keeps it from sinking to the bottom of the batter during the second rise and baking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Clovefits less well
  4. Gingerfits less well

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