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Dessert

Raisin Layer Cake

A layered cake with plain and raisin batter, finished with boiled icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Raisin Layer Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the cottolene.

  2. Gradually add the sugar.

  3. Beat in the egg yolks until well combined.

  4. Sift the baking powder with the flour.

  5. Add the sifted mixture to the batter, alternating with the milk.

  6. Beat the egg whites until stiff.

  7. Fold the stiff egg whites into the batter last.

Divide and bake

  1. Divide the mixture in half.

  2. Add the raisins to one half.

  3. Fill two layer cake pans with the plain batter and two with the raisin batter.

  4. Bake until golden.

Assemble

  1. Spread boiled icing between the layers.

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. Sugar + raisintop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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
Provides the structure that holds the cake's rise and crumb together.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, lifting the layers as they bake.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and the whites add lightness when beaten.
Cottolene
Fat that coats flour particles, giving the cake a tender texture.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps keep the crumb moist and tender.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness to one set of layers.

The step that matters

Fold the stiff egg whites into the batter last. Beaten whites trap air that helps the cake rise. Stirring them in vigorously or too long deflates the foam, leading to a denser, tougher layer.

Swap the raisin

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

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

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