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Dessert

Dundee Cake

A moist fruit cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, dried fruit, spices, and almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

Dundee Cake

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the batter

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

  2. In a large bowl, whip the butter and sugar until creamy.

  3. Add the eggs two at a time, beating for 5 minutes between each addition.

  4. Stir in the cream or milk.

  5. In another bowl, mix the flour and baking powder, then add to the butter mixture.

  6. Fold in the lemon peel, currants, sultana raisins, nutmeg, cloves, and vanilla.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a shallow square cake pan.

  2. Sprinkle the chopped almonds on top.

  3. Bake for 1 hour.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Currant + raisintop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,180 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Creams with the sugar to trap air, giving the cake a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Provide structure and richness, setting the crumb as the cake bakes.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the cake as its proteins set during baking.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise and become light.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and, creamed with butter, helps hold air for a lighter texture.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness and moisture throughout the cake.

The step that matters

Beating in the eggs. Adding eggs too quickly can split the batter, because the emulsion of butter and egg breaks. Adding them slowly, with beating between additions, keeps the batter smooth so the cake bakes evenly and holds its air.

Swap the currant

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

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

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