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Dessert

Raised Cake

A yeast-raised sweet cake with raisins, butter, lard, sugar, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Raised Cake

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 ↓

Raised 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. In a large bowl, combine 3 cups of sweet milk and 1 cup of yeast.

  2. Stir in enough flour to make a batter and let it rise overnight.

Mix and rise

  1. After rising, add 2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of butter, 1 cup of lard, 2 eggs, 2 grated nutmegs, and the juice of 1 lemon or orange.

  2. Mix in 1 teaspoon of baking soda and 6 cups of flour until well combined.

  3. Fold in 1½ pounds of raisins, a little citron, and a little mace.

  4. Let the dough rise for 2 hours in warm tins.

Bake

  1. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  4. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness and structure as the cake sets.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic citrus juice to help the cake rise and lighten.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the cake its body and crumb structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness, flavour and a golden browning.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the crumb tender and moist.
Raisins
Provide pockets of sweetness and chewy moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Adding the baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid, such as the lemon or orange juice, to react and leaven the dough. Mixing it in well distributes the reaction evenly so the cake rises uniformly rather than in patches.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Coconutfits about as well

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