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Dessert

Imperial Cake

A rich fruit cake made with raisins, citron, almonds, and brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Imperial Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the well-beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. Gradually add the flour, nutmeg, brandy, and salt.

  4. Dredge the raisins and citron with a little flour.

  5. Fold the dredged raisins and citron into the batter.

Bake

  1. Pour the mixture into a prepared cake pan.

  2. 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. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Raisin + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a light, tender crumb and rich flavor.
Sugar
Creams with the butter for a light, fluffy structure and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Flour
Forms the structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Raisins
Add moisture and chewy sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Dredge the raisins and citron with a little flour before folding them in. Coating the fruit in flour helps it stay suspended in the batter instead of sinking to the bottom during baking, so the fruit is spread evenly through the cake.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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