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Dessert

Raisin Layer Cake

A layered cake with raisin and hickory nut filling made from butter, sugar, milk, eggs, flour, and baking powder.

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 ↓

Raisin Layer 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 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 eggs (except the reserved egg white) and mix well.

  4. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then gradually add to the wet mixture.

Make the filling

  1. Boil 4 tablespoons of water with 1 cup of sugar to make a syrup.

  2. Beat the reserved egg white to a stiff froth.

  3. Pour the boiling syrup over the egg white, stirring constantly.

  4. Fold the chopped raisins and hickory nuts into the syrup mixture.

Assemble

  1. Spread the filling between the layers of cake and on top.

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. Raisin + nutstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together490 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake's crumb together as it bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas during baking, helping the cake rise and become light.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the batter.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender texture and rich flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown and stay moist.
Milk
Adds moisture and liquid that hydrates the flour.

The step that matters

Pour the boiling syrup over the egg white, stirring constantly.. The hot syrup partly cooks and stabilizes the whipped white. Pouring it in a thin stream while stirring keeps the mixture smooth and airy instead of clumped or deflated.

Swap the nuts

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

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

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