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Dessert

Black Cake

A dense fruitcake made with flour, sugar, butter, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, spices, brandy, wine, and rose water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 ↓

Black Cake

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Sift the flour, baking powder, and spices together.

  4. Mix the sifted ingredients with the chopped fruit.

  5. Combine this mixture with the butter, sugar, and egg yolks, and beat well.

  6. Add the brandy, wine, and rose water.

  7. Finally, fold in the well-beaten egg whites.

Bake

  1. Bake carefully.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 together as it bakes.
Eggs
Egg yolks enrich and bind the batter, while whites add lift when folded in.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and carries flavor through the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender, browned crumb when creamed with butter.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking so the cake rises and becomes lighter.
Raisins
Add concentrated sweetness, moisture, and chewy texture to the cake.

The step that matters

Fold in the egg whites. Whites hold air that gives the cake its lift. Folding gently, rather than beating, keeps that air from collapsing, so the cake bakes up lighter.

Swap the mace

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

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

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