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Dessert

Scotch Cake

A fruit cake made with flour, butter, sugar, eggs, raisins, currants, citron, orange peel, walnuts, vanilla, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Scotch Cake

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 ↓

Scotch 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 batter

  1. Beat the butter until creamy, then gradually add the sugar while continuing to beat.

  2. Beat the eggs until very light, then gradually add them to the butter and sugar mixture, beating vigorously.

  3. Add the sifted flour, then the vanilla and pounded nuts, mixing well.

  4. Fold in the chopped fruits last.

Bake and rest

  1. Pour the batter into a large loaf pan and bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until done.

  2. For best flavor, let the cake sit for a week or two before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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 + curranttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Orange + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Eggs
Beaten eggs trap air and add structure as the cake sets.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and gives the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a fine, creamed texture with the butter.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the batter once the cake sets in the oven.
Raisins and currants
Add moisture, chewiness and sweetness throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating the eggs until very light. Air whipped into the eggs is a main source of lift and lightness; under-beaten eggs give a dense cake, and adding them too quickly to the butter can curdle the batter.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Lemonfits better
  4. Currantthe original

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