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Dessert

Webster Cakes

A raisin and almond flavored cake baked with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, baking powder, milk, vanilla, and raisins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Webster Cakes

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, beat together the butter, sugar, and eggs until well combined.

  2. Sift the flour with the baking powder and add it to the mixture.

  3. Stir in the milk, raisins, almond extract, and vanilla extract until just combined.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased baking pan and bake for 45 minutes.

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 + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Almond + vanillatop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, and helps the batter hold air when beaten with sugar.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps create a tender crumb when creamed with butter.
Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as the cake sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the cake bakes.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter so the cake rises in the oven.
Milk
Adds moisture and loosens the batter to a pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Stir in the milk, raisins, and extracts until just combined. Once the flour is in, overmixing develops gluten, which makes the cake tough and dense. Stirring only until combined keeps the crumb tender.

Swap the raisin

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

  1. Figfits about as well
  2. Raisinthe original
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Peachfits about as well

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