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Cheap Minnehaha Cake

A layered raisin cake with a sugar syrup and whipped egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Cheap Minnehaha 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 layers

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

  2. Cream together the sugar and butter in a bowl.

  3. Add the egg yolks, milk or water, flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda; mix well.

  4. Pour the batter into 3 or 4 greased cake tins, depending on their size.

Make the raisin filling

  1. Boil 1½ cups of sugar with a little water until it ropes.

  2. Beat the whites of 2 eggs to stiff peaks and gradually add the hot sugar mixture, stirring quickly.

  3. Fold in the chopped raisins.

  4. Spread the mixture between the baked layers 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

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

  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

Eggs
Egg yolks enrich the batter, while beaten whites form the airy frosting structure.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it adds richness and a tender crumb to the cake.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the cake layers together.
Cream of tartar
Stabilizes the beaten egg whites and helps the frosting hold its shape.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter's acidity to produce gas that helps the cake rise.
Raisins
Add chewy texture and concentrated sweetness throughout the filling.

The step that matters

Beating the egg whites with hot sugar syrup. The syrup must be hot enough and added slowly while beating, so the whites cook partially and form a stable, glossy foam. Pouring it in too fast or letting the whites deflate can leave the frosting runny or weeping.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

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