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Dessert

Nut Drop Cakes

Nut Drop Cakes are small sweet cakes made with butter, brown sugar, eggs, raisins, walnuts, flour, baking soda, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cassia and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 116 recipes. Both carry cinnamyl acetate, which smells sweet aromatic, cinnamon. The science ↓

Nut Drop Cakes

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.

Prepare

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

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and brown sugar together until smooth.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and mix well.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine the raisins, walnuts, spices, and flour.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little warm water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Mix thoroughly and drop spoonfuls onto a baking pan.

Bake

  1. Bake until golden brown.

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. Cassia + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together116 recipes

    Shared aroma: cinnamyl acetate (sweet aromatic, cinnamon).

  2. Raisin + flourtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Raisin + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Walnut + cinnamontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,147 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to add richness and a tender crumb.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness, moisture and a caramel-like flavor to the cake.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cakes set.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that holds the drops together.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to help the drops rise and spread.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavor.

The step that matters

Mix thoroughly and drop spoonfuls onto a baking pan.. Mixing the dissolved baking soda in evenly keeps the rise uniform. Spoonfuls of similar size bake at the same rate, so the cakes brown evenly.

Swap the cassia

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Cassiathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, egg, raisin, walnut, flour, cinnamon. 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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