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Dessert

Minnehaha Cake

A cake with butter, sugar, milk, flour, egg whites, baking powder, and a filling of sugar, water, pecans, raisins, and egg white.

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

Minnehaha 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Make the cake

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

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

  3. Add the milk and mix well.

  4. Gradually add the flour and baking powder, mixing until smooth.

  5. In a separate bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then fold them into the batter.

  6. Pour the batter into prepared cake pans and bake for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

Make the filling

  1. For the filling, boil the white sugar with enough water to cover until it forms a hard drop in cold water.

  2. Stir in the pecans and raisins, then let it cool.

  3. Once cooled, fold in the beaten egg white and spread between the cake 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + pecanstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,416 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Adds fat and tenderness, and carries flavor through the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and hold moisture.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the cake as it bakes.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they add lift and an airy, light texture.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the oven, helping the cake rise.
Milk
Adds moisture and helps form a smooth batter.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Folding gently keeps the air in the whipped whites. Stirring hard deflates the batter, leaving a denser, flatter cake.

Swap the pecans

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Pecansthe original

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